frustrating

In Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella we meet sisters Lottie and Fliss. Lottie is sure Richard her boyfriend is about to propose, but when he doesn’t Lottie ends the relationship. Then Ben, Lottie’s first love from 15 years ago gets back in touch and tells her that he’s never stopped loving her. He drunkenly proposes and she agrees to marry him with one condition: no sex until the Wedding Night. Fliss is going through a difficult divorce and adjusting to being a single mother to her son Noah. The divorce is making Fliss bitter and she’s starting to feel that getting married to Daniel was the worst mistake she ever made; Noah being the only good thing to come out of the marriage.

Fliss receives a call from Lottie telling her that Richard & she have broke up and that she’s going to marry Ben. Fliss is understandably more than a little bit concerned. Especially as Lottie has a habit of making ‘unfortunate choices’ when experiencing emotional trauma – like that time she joined a cult.

Fliss decides that this marriage to Ben is another ‘unfortunate choice’ and must be stopped. When Fliss fails to stop the wedding, she puts all her efforts into stopping the Wedding Night so that the marriage can be annulled.

Wedding Night is written with chapters in both Lottie and Fliss’ perspective and starts as comfortably predictable at the beginning, but as the book progresses the predictability becomes increasingly frustrating to the reader.

As with all of Kinsella‘s books the element of fantasy and escapism came in the form of a very wealthy business man whose a love interest for the main character. In Lottie’s case, this was Ben. This was a missed chance for Kinsella be more creative and use a different fantasy element.

The description lacked detail, relying far too much on the readers imagination. Compared to Kinsella‘s previous books, the characters in Wedding Night felt dumbed down and lacked any emotional depth. The reader gets to know Fliss a lot better than Lottie which is dissatisfying as the story is suppose to be about Lottie’s Wedding Night.

Mid-way through the book Fliss decides to read Lottie’s diary. The diary Lottie wrote when she was eight-teen, when she first met Ben during her gap year on the Greek Island of Ikonos. This was a perfect opportunity to add some depth to Lottie’s character, as well as give the reader some idea of the past relationship between Lottie & Ben, but Kinsella completely missed this, much to the readers disappointment.

Kinsella clearly tried to write a comedy and there were a few funny chapters; but many fell short of causing a smile, let alone a laugh. Kinsella‘s desire to write humorous chapters seemed to be at the sacrifice of the plot, which felt filmsy and put together with numerous hints that were as subtle as anvils falling from the sky.

Kinsella really lost her way with this book. Wedding Night was more chick-trash than chick-lit. Kinsella is regarded as Queen of chick-lit, but if she writes another book like this she is likely to loose her crown.

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella is available to buy on Amazon.

Review soon,

Antony

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