Jasmine Guillory (The Wedding Date) opens her lively novel The Proposal at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Nikole "Nik" Paterson--a young freelance journalist and not a baseball fan--is sharing a day out with Fisher, her "perfectly nice, incredibly boring" beau of five months. Nik gets the surprise of her life, though, when Fisher proposes marriage to her on the stadium JumboTron. With a crowd of 45,000 baseball fans eagerly awaiting her answer, Nikole renders a rejection. That's when "perfectly nice" Fisher turns perfectly insulting and nasty. But Nik is rescued when Carlos Ibarra and his sister Angela swoop in, pretending to be long-lost friends of Nik, and usher her away.
The fortuitousness of this meeting soon sparks a fling between Nik and Carlos, a conscientious, handsome young doctor. Carlos is very much involved with the demands of his self-appointed responsibility to everyone in his family, especially a beloved cousin during her difficult pregnancy, marred with medical complications. For Nik, the fallout from the JumboTron disaster resurrects insecurity and self-esteem issues from painful past relationships. These respective dilemmas pull Nik and Carlos in opposite directions, creating impediments to their deepening romance. They must confront what they truly want for their lives, their futures and their relationship.
Through snappy dialogue and short scenes, Guillory explores the traps, pitfalls and triumphs of contemporary young love in the age of social media and viral videos. And Carlos's dynamic extended family and Nik's wisecracking girlfriends enliven and fortify the appeal of the fast-paced story. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines