Save the Date

 Mallory Kass

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Genre: Contemporary Fiction + Rom-Com

Summary

Save the Date by Mallory Kass is a rom-com that combines three fun tropes from different movies into one package. The book follows three women:

Marigold: The Bride

Movie: Sweet Home Alabama

Trope: The heroine is engaged to a perfect fiancé (Jonathan). She suddenly discovers she is still legally married to her ex-husband (Hugo), and the divorce papers were never finalized. She leaves her wedding rehearsal to go to Canada to finalize the divorce. Marigold rekindles feelings along the way.

Natalie: The Bridesmaid

Movie: My Best Friend’s Wedding

Trope: Natalie is the bridesmaid and her best friend. She’s also best friends with the groom (Jonathan) and secretly loves him. She helps a lot with the wedding, and emotionally, she is drained by her conflicted feelings between betraying Marigold or her own heart.

Olivia: The Sister

Movie: Picture Perfect

Trope: Olivia is so attracted to Andrew, but her heart is crushed when he brings a date to the wedding. Jonathan’s best man (Zack) suggests that the best way to make Andrew jealous is for him and Olivia to fake a relationship. And of course, we know what will happen next.

Characters

The characters are quite lovable here. I think the author did a great job with the characterization and their depth. This is not a single hero or heroine story. Mallory Kass made sure all the characters got their due in terms of their present ground as well as their backstories. The girls and their stories were very easy to distinguish from each other. However, because the plot follows predictable romantic beats, the characters sometimes feel guided by the needs of the trope rather than fully organic growth, making them engaging and likable but not always deeply layered.

Writing Style

The writing style in Save the Date is light, accessible, and easy to get into. It relies a lot on conversations between the characters. The chapters are short and rotate between the three girls’ perspectives in third-person style. The author in her story is more focused on internal thoughts and emotional tensions than on descriptive world-building. The prose is clear and polished, which serves the story efficiently. 

Atmosphere:

This is a wedding-centric atmosphere, which makes it emotionally charged—filled with drama and romantic tension in a good way. It is very suitable when you are in the mood to read something light and accessible, rather than heavy or angsty

Final Thoughts

Overall, I found the story to be a fun ride, following the three women with their different emotional stories. Yes, the plot follows familiar tropes and will feel predictable, but the execution of these tropes and the way they were combined into one big plot made things truly interesting. The epilogue was excellent and not expected at all. 

Readers who enjoy multi-POV rom-coms with a wedding backdrop should definitely check this one out. To me, it was a satisfying and engaging pick that earns a solid 4-star rating. 

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC of this book. 

Key Themes

• Romantic Conflict
• Romantic Reconciliation
• Second Chance
• Wedding Backdrop
• Love vs. Societal Expectations
• Personal Growth
• Self-Discovery

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead

 Mai Nguyen

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐
Genre: Contemporary Fiction

Summary

Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead follows Cleo, a woman whose life splinters after the stillbirth of her daughter. The novel begins right inside that rupture, with no attempt to soften either the physical aftermath or the emotional shock of loss. Grief here isn’t abstract or poetic; it shows up as bodily pain, simmering resentment, numb stretches, and sudden flares of rage. As the world continues to move forward, Cleo remains in some kind of state of denial, rejecting that she has lost her child.

As she pulls away from her normal, ordinary, usual stuff, her relationships start to suffer. Her grief causes her marriage to be more complicated, and her friendship with Paloma becomes particularly strained. Paloma gave birth to a healthy baby at the same time Cleo lost hers, and that parallel—once incidental—turns unbearable. Cleo’s grief often surfaces as sharp, sometimes darkly funny internal commentary, which seems to underline just how isolating “out-of-order” loss can be. Even the kind gestures she keeps getting from her friends and family don’t seem to be having any effect on her, leaving her feeling more alienated than comforted.

Then, when Cleo takes a job at a funeral home, she encounters death in its many variations and meets people handling loss in different ways, be it different rituals or beliefs. The funeral home becomes a kind of emotional holding space. It is less suffocating than her home, yet mercifully free of any expectation that she should be “getting better.”

Through these encounters, the novel traces Cleo’s slow, uneven drift toward something that might resemble survival. This isn’t a story about healing in the tidy, redemptive sense. It’s more concerned with how a person keeps going when grief feels permanent, unfair, and stubbornly unresolved.

Characters

Cleo is a compelling but often difficult protagonist. Her voice is caustic, bitter, and unfiltered, which makes her grief feel lived-in rather than curated for sympathy. At times, her internal monologue circles the same emotional ground, occasionally to the point of fatigue. Still, I feel that repetition appears intentional, and trying to echo the way trauma traps people in loops they can’t easily escape. Her emotional stagnation isn’t accidental, though it may try some readers’ patience.

The supporting characters have their own purpose, but they largely function as emotional counterpoints rather than fully developed individuals. For example, Paloma, in particular, represents the uncomfortable coexistence of love and resentment, though her characterization sometimes feels flattened just to sharpen that contrast. For the most part, these characters exist in relation to Cleo’s grief, and few are given arcs that extend much beyond it.

Writing Style

Mai Nguyen writes in a first-person voice that feels confessional and often confrontational, blending graphic physical detail with blunt emotional honesty. The prose tends to linger on discomfort, refusing the safety of lyrical distance. I think this approach gives the novel its immediacy and emotional punch, though it can also feel heavy in longer stretches. The style seems less interested in subtlety than in making sure nothing painful goes unacknowledged—a choice that works powerfully at times and less so when the intensity becomes unvaried.

Setting

The novel unfolds in contemporary Toronto, moving between Cleo’s home, the hospital, and the funeral home where she later works. These are ordinary, recognizably mundane spaces, which quietly reinforce the idea that grief doesn’t happen in dramatic isolation. 

Atmosphere

I’d say the atmosphere is raw, oppressive, and emotionally claustrophobic most of the time. Although the novel is advertised to have dark humor, I personally didn’t feel much of that. The grief and sadness are what prevail in this story. 

Final Thoughts

At three stars, Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead is a striking story about loss and grief, but it was not an easy read, especially if you have picked it up for the promise of dark humor. The good thing about the story is that it doesn’t romanticize loss or rush the recovery. 

I feel the biggest flaw is when the book sometimes lingers too long in emotional stasis, where repetition begins to stand in for depth. While I admired the honesty here, I felt the narrative flow faltered, and by the end, any sense of transformation ended up being muted. This is likely to resonate deeply with readers who recognize their own experiences in it, while others may find it emotionally exhausting or narratively constrained. Yes, I found it to be thoughtful and sincere, but just not entirely satisfying. 

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for the ARC of this book. 

Key Themes

• Child Loss
• Death
• Grief
• Trauma
• Identity After Loss
• Survival