Scan barcode
A review by jacqueline1989
Trouble at the Wedding: Abandoned at the Altar by Laura Lee Guhrke
3.0
Here's the progression of this book, in short: Interesting, good, getting better, even better, fun, best, wow, wow-wow-WOW, HOLY-COOL-PEAK, rushed scenes, resolved ending, The End. Yep, that about covers it.
Laura Lee Guhrke has a weird talent for making books oddly unique and different. She's a writer who creates interesting plots that either start off wonderful, get better, and end awesomely, or instead she creates wonderful buildup with too-hurried endings. Sadly, Trouble At The Wedding was just such a book; excellent exposition and a great first act, but an epic Dropped Ball in the final chapters.
The start of the novel was unquestionably interesting, opening with the Prologue of the heroine, Annabel, smack dab in the middle of getting married to someone Not-the-Hero. What made this book such a grab for me, personally, was the shocker that Chapter One didn't jump ahead in time to a single-heroine-zone, but rather, reversed course and retreated seven days prior to the wedding ceremony of the Prologue. Essentially Annabel and our hero, Christian, are juxtaposed in an interesting dynamic for the first half of the novel, and every page of this plot-part is a phenomenal read.
...Until Part One is resolved. As Annabel and Christian enter a new scenario, the feel of the book seems as if the author suddenly realized she was running short on pages and had to rush a bunch of scenes together. While such writing device previously went unused in the story, all of a sudden major time-jumps are occurring, almost within every chapter. The emotions and realism of the characters were seemingly sacrificed on the alter of Spliced Editing, and as the reader sees less "real time" scenes, the story almost appears to fall apart.
Ironically, despite this big-time Let Down, I still found myself desiring to see the outcome of the plot. Even while watered-down, I did care enough about the characters to reach the HEA, and enjoyed the wry humor of the fact that the novel opens with a wedding, and ends with a wedding. Overall, I enjoyed the uniquely refreshing qualities to this book, its timeline and plot-time construction, its initial on-the-seas setting and so forth, but realistically, the story was as much a let down as it was entertaining. Likable, though not remarkable.
Laura Lee Guhrke has a weird talent for making books oddly unique and different. She's a writer who creates interesting plots that either start off wonderful, get better, and end awesomely, or instead she creates wonderful buildup with too-hurried endings. Sadly, Trouble At The Wedding was just such a book; excellent exposition and a great first act, but an epic Dropped Ball in the final chapters.
The start of the novel was unquestionably interesting, opening with the Prologue of the heroine, Annabel, smack dab in the middle of getting married to someone Not-the-Hero. What made this book such a grab for me, personally, was the shocker that Chapter One didn't jump ahead in time to a single-heroine-zone, but rather, reversed course and retreated seven days prior to the wedding ceremony of the Prologue. Essentially Annabel and our hero, Christian, are juxtaposed in an interesting dynamic for the first half of the novel, and every page of this plot-part is a phenomenal read.
...Until Part One is resolved. As Annabel and Christian enter a new scenario, the feel of the book seems as if the author suddenly realized she was running short on pages and had to rush a bunch of scenes together. While such writing device previously went unused in the story, all of a sudden major time-jumps are occurring, almost within every chapter. The emotions and realism of the characters were seemingly sacrificed on the alter of Spliced Editing, and as the reader sees less "real time" scenes, the story almost appears to fall apart.
Ironically, despite this big-time Let Down, I still found myself desiring to see the outcome of the plot. Even while watered-down, I did care enough about the characters to reach the HEA, and enjoyed the wry humor of the fact that the novel opens with a wedding, and ends with a wedding. Overall, I enjoyed the uniquely refreshing qualities to this book, its timeline and plot-time construction, its initial on-the-seas setting and so forth, but realistically, the story was as much a let down as it was entertaining. Likable, though not remarkable.