THE BEST MAN was both a humorous and heart-wrenching romance that was also quite heart-warming. The story begins when Faith Holland is jilted at the altar when her fiancé and love of her your life—Jeremy—announces to the congregation that he is Gay. She blames his best man Levi Cooper for forcing the issue. They have know each other all their lives but have never been friends. Faith flees to San Francisco and builds her career as a landscape architect.Three and a half years pass. Jeremy is the town doctor. Levi has left the service and become the Chief of Police. Faith has had a number of false starts as she tries to find new romance including dating another Gay guy and a man who is cheating on his wife which leads to a funny confrontation with his wife and child. Faith is urged by her family to come home to stop their widowed Dad from marrying a hugely inappropriate woman. When Faith gets home she finds herself quickly gathered back into her rather dysfunctional family. Her grandparents are constantly bickering, her older sister and her husband are having interesting marital difficulties, and her dad is oblivious to the very obvious gold-digger who has him in her sights. Faith's attempts to find her father a better bet for a second romance were really funny. Who knew there were so many characters out there in the dating pool?Along the way she keeps having run-ins with Levi who, she is certain, hates her. Levi is conflicted. He thinks she is hot but he can't quite get over that she is the ex-fiancé of his best friend. He has issues of his own too. He is raising his sister and both of them are still grieving the loss of their mother. He is dealing with a divorce from a fellow soldier who didn't find small town life exciting enough to keep her from re-enlisting. He is also still dealing with the fact that his father abandoned him when he was young and has now started a new life with a new wife and new sons. All of these things keep him from wanting to start something with Faith where he might be second-best. Faith is keeping secrets of her own too. She isn't the cute, perky character that Levi always believed she was. Besides suffering from epilepsy, Faith is still consumed by the fear that she is the one who caused her mother's death when she distracted her while they were driving. Probably the most touching part of the whole romance for me was when Levi did an accident reconstruction in the middle of the night and proved to Faith that the accident wasn't caused by anything she did or didn't do. He wasn't the sort of guy who could do sweet words or gestures but that said love to me.Readers who like strong emotions in their romance and who want some humor too can't do better than to read this romance by Kristan Higgins.
