A review by dullshimmer
The Bride's Trail by A.A. Abbott

3.0

I had a hard time getting into this one at first. The book's chapters are all from different characters points of views, but there are so many different ones who get a POV that it makes it hard to know why you're supposed to care about the character you're following. Eventually, as the story gets going a little this sorts itself out a bit, but I think just going for a regular old third person narrative style would have probably worked out a bit better in my opinion. It would have at least created a smoother start.

Beyond that the book was just okay. There weren't many characters that I really liked. I did like Amy, who is kind of our main character in our story, but also thought that it was a bit of an odd move for her to work so hard to find her missing roommate, Kat, that she had only known for two months and had recently found out that she had stolen her identity for a sham marriage. Why would she have cared quite enough? I'm not sure we're given a good enough motive for that.

I did also like a few of the minor characters like Charles, Amy's dad and Mark, Kat's brother. However, they were somewhat minor characters and didn't play that much of a role in the book. The rest of the cast, I didn't really fancy that much. Kat was barely in the book and since she was the cause of so much trouble with her poor choices, it was hard to like her. Ross who winds up helping Amy, more because he fancies Kat then anything else, was kind of an arrogant jerk that was hard to like.

The narrative also seemed more cluttered than it needed to be. You have a company buyout going on in the background for the company that Amy and Ross work at, a backstory about a high end vodka company that Kat's dad started, some characters like Amy's dad that seemed unimportant to the plot, and even a potential cure for cancer thrown into the mix. It was just a bit cluttered feeling, but this is the start to a series of books, so maybe it is all setup for later reveals?

Even though I do have these complaints about the book, it was also a fairly nice easy read and kept me interested once I got past the first quarter of the book or so. It has a fair share of issues, but it did end up being enjoyable enough. The big question, that I don't currently have an answer to, is do I go on to the next book? It's tempting, but I'm not sure if I will or not especially since it seems to follow Kat more than Amy which is kind of odd in some ways.