The Wedding Sisters – Jamie Brenner
The Wedding Sisters by Jamie Brenner
Published by St. Martin's Griffin on June 7, 2016
The Wedding Sisters by Jamie Brenner sounded like such a cute read. Three sisters get engaged the same year and a triple wedding is planned. I expected hijinks and cute situations and fun. Instead I read a tale of selfish people and an intense need to be seen as high class. Meryl, the mother of Meg, Amy, and Jo, is determined to throw her daughters the perfect wedding and will not accept help from anyone else. Oh, except from People magazine and some PR folks. Her husband, a seemingly sweet academic, decides to make an odd stand and potentially screw his family with no care for them, and Jo and Amy get engaged for all the wrong reasons.
The plot of The Wedding Sisters had such potential. Instead it was like reading a script of Bridezillas featuring Momzillas on the warpath. The writing of Jamie Brenner had some really good moments. There were a few very funny parts and some real emotion, but the plot just dragged the great moments down. The pacing also had some issues. The time would skip a few months at a time, it was stated at the start of the chapter which was nice, but it still felt like there were some holes in the timeline. The world built was very limited, to mainly the home of Meryl, but this was primarily a character driven tale so it wasn’t detrimental to the story. There were some great emotions, however they were overshadowed by the intense need to be seen as important. The characters were all pretty awful. Greedy, selfish and so obsessed with how they were perceived, I disliked them all but Meg. She was a least a shining light in the story and I was glad I could latch on to her to follow through.
The Wedding Sisters could have been amazing. Jamie Brenner had some great moments but the arc she took the family on just didn’t work for me. I didn’t hate the story, I was just turned off by the actions of the characters. That made this an average read for me; not great but not awful.
I received this book for free from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
