Review: The Proposal

Jasmine Guillory (The Wedding Date) opens her lively novel The Proposal at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. It seems a perfect, idyllic day: a "clear blue sky, bright green baseball field, warm sun shining down on the thousands" of baseball fans. Nikole "Nik" Paterson--a young African American freelance journalist and writer--is sharing a day out with Fisher, her "perfectly nice, incredibly boring" beau of five months--his "blond man bun golden in the sun." Nik, not a baseball fan, would much prefer "spending this beautiful spring day with her laptop and a glass of bourbon on the rocks than outside at a baseball stadium with a warm beer." But it's Fisher's birthday, so Nik suffers through the game for the sake of her boyfriend and his accompanying friends.
 
In later innings, things get a lot more interesting when Nik has the surprise of her life: Fisher, an actor, proposes marriage to her on the stadium JumboTron. Nikole--faced with a scoreboard proposal, Fisher down on one knee with a ring and a crowd of 45,000 baseball fans eagerly awaiting her answer--renders a rejection. That's when "perfectly nice" Fisher turns perfectly insulting and nasty. But Nik is rescued by two other baseball fans--complete strangers--who empathize with Nik's public humiliation. Carlos Ibarra and his sister Angela swoop in, pretending to be long-lost friends of Nik. They usher her away from the sordid mess, complete with gawking fans and camera crews.
 
The fortuitousness of this meeting soon sparks a fling between Nik and Carlos, a conscientious, handsome young doctor and the patriarch/protector of a tight-knit Mexican American family. 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 that form the basis of a loosely crafted plot, Guillory explores the traps, pitfalls and triumphs of contemporary young love in the age of social media and viral videos, multiculturalism and diversity. Carlos played a small, memorable role in Guillory's previous novel, The Wedding Date, and two other characters from that book also make cameos in The Proposal. Carlos's dynamic extended family and Nik's wisecracking girlfriends enliven and fortify the appeal of the fast-paced storyline. However, it's the thread of junk food, sugary snacks and cultural comfort food that spices up this hip romantic comedy, bound to be a delicious treat for literary appetites craving escapism and happy endings. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines
 
Shelf Talker: After a public marriage proposal goes awry, an unlucky-in-love writer on the rebound grapples with her attraction to a handsome doctor.
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