16
Jul

Book review: Wedding night

Once in a while you need a chick flick to feel that young girl inside you. (It was lots of fun watching ‘The Devil Wears Prada’ with my two little ones 😉 ).

Ditto with the books. A hilarious, girly read that got me laughing out loud multiple times. The right balance of inner voice and outer expressions, flawed protagonists, somewhat cliched misfortunes but nevertheless a super-fun read. I read Sophie Kinsella’s debut shopaholic novel about a decade ago and liked that too.

The plot revolves around Lottie, our 33 year old beautiful lady who is dating Michael for a steady 3 years and waiting to be proposed to. The book begins with her mistaking a special lunch invite by him to be a proposal, and things go south pretty soon. A hurried break up and she suddenly bumps into an old flame from 15 years ago, a guy that she spent her gap year with enjoying the beautiful isles in Greece. Dreamy Lottie has an older sister Fliss, going through a crazy divorce, balancing her work and her highly imaginative young boy. Fliss is certain that Lottie will do something stupid in her newly-broken-up status, and boy is she right.

Lottie decides to marry the old flame Ben, who proposes to her right in their first meet up after 15 years, and makes a condition that they postpone sex upto their wedding night. Fliss teams up with Ben’s business partner and they start scheming on how to prevent the marriage, and when that fails, Fliss decides that an annulment is the next best option. For which the marriage must not be consummated!

And so set off a series of unfortunate events, twists and turns, sex and embarassment, drama and lies, schemes and airport scenes. Text messages, phone calls, frustrated moments and new characters are thrown into the mix. Some of the passages of the over protective elder sister and the naivete of the younger one struck a chord giving a few extra laughs.

I would have never imagined a plot centered around the mating attempts of the lead cast, and how every single attempt is thwarted, mostly due to the manipulative older sister. Michael realizes he wants to marry Lottie afterall, Lottie and Ben realize their marriage was too hurried, and several twists later, there’s a happy ending for all!

Albeit a bit cliched, I enjoyed reading this one a lot. Simple language, easily Hollywood movie material. Read it when you want to lighten up 🙂