Review: Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella

Wedding Night by Sophie Kinsella
Publisher: Bantam Press
Publication date: April 23rd 2013
My rating: 3 stars

Lottie just knows that her boyfriend is going to propose during lunch at one of London’s fanciest restaurants. But when his big question involves a trip abroad, not a trip down the aisle, she’s completely crushed. So when Ben, an old flame, calls her out of the blue and reminds Lottie of their pact to get married if they were both still single at thirty, she jumps at the chance. No formal dates—just a quick march to the altar and a honeymoon on Ikonos, the sun-drenched Greek island where they first met years ago. Their family and friends are horrified. Fliss, Lottie’s older sister, knows that Lottie can be impulsive—but surely this is her worst decision yet. And Ben’s colleague Lorcan fears that this hasty marriage will ruin his friend’s career. To keep Lottie and Ben from making a terrible mistake, Fliss concocts an elaborate scheme to sabotage their wedding night. As she and Lorcan jet off to Ikonos in pursuit, Lottie and Ben are in for a honeymoon to remember, for better . . . or worse.

Sophie Kinsella is my always go to author whenever I need a quick pick me up. Her books are light and fluffy reads and are always quick to bring a smile to my face. However for the first time the initial reviews I had read for her latest book Wedding Night hadn’t been that great, but it was a Kinsella book so I knew I would be reading it regardless.

Lottie has been waiting for the night that her boyfriend Richard will propose for a long time now. He’s been dropping hints for a few days now and she can’t contain her excitement any longer. But the night that was meant to be the night of her dreams ends up going wildly wrong. Lottie’s known to make rash decisions when things have not gone her way, so her sister Fliss has every right to be worried. And Lottie proves her right, after things didn’t go to plan with Richard; she gets a phone call out of the blue from her boyfriend of 15 years ago Ben. They end up going for a meal and decide to get married. (This is a few days after her break up with Richard). Fliss tries to do everything she can to stop this charade from going ahead, but Ben’s best friend Lorcan ends up frustrating Ben so much that they have a rush marriage and go off to spend their honeymoon where they first met 15 years ago in Greece. But Fliss decides she’s having none of it and that the only way they can get out of the sham of a marriage is by not consummating their marriage in the first place. So she gets the manager of the hotel they’re staying at involved to stop them from consummating their marriage any way possible until she gets there!

Usually when it comes to Kinsella’s books I’m able to overlook the far-fetched stories or extreme lengths some characters may go too, but I think with Wedding Night, it was a bit too much for me. Which sister goes to extreme lengths to prevent their sister from consummating their marriage? I know Fliss cared, but there were other ways she could have gone around this. Lottie was a little head strong and sort of had tunnel vision ideas where everything she thought she was doing was right. She would never stop to think about the consequences until afterwards. I did initially have a really hard time connecting to Lottie’s character because of this and was thankful to the dual pov’s that we were given in this book. Because I think if I had Lottie’s pov throughout I probably would have knocked another star off my rating. The story however and Lottie did begin to grow on me as soon as Fliss got the hotel staff involved, it was funny seeing another butler intervene whenever things were hotting up for Ben and Lottie. And I really enjoyed learning about Fliss’s back story and her trip over to stop Ben and Lottie was a truly eventful one.

Wedding Night was a fun read, but unfortunately I didn’t end up enjoying it as much as I’d hoped. I think if I was able to overlook some of the issues that I had and may be the ending didn’t up the way it had I could have given Wedding Night four stars. But despite Wedding Night not being Kinsella’s strongest read for me, it has not put me off from picking up any of her future books.