Review: Always the Designer Never the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker

Title: Always the Designer Never the Bride

Author: Sandra D. Bricker

Publisher: Abingdon Press

Publication date: 1st April 2012

Source: Netgalley

My rating: 1 star

I went into this book with the assumption that it would be a bit like the film 27 dresses. The title kind of gave me that impression and because I really loved that film you could say I sort of got over excited. But as per usual the title was kind of deceiving.

Audrey Regan has been into designing wedding dresses ever since she was a little girl, when she was just nine years old, her friends were busy playing with Barbie dolls, Audrey was creating  “haute couture” for her dolls, so it’s not surprising that Audrey grew up and became a wedding dress designer. However everything’s not as easy as Audrey thought it would be, she took the chance and moved to New York, aiming for the big clientele, but it’s been tough, brides are typically going for the recognised designers and Audrey is just managing to scrape by. However with her best friend Carly’s wedding looming Audrey has to put everything on hold and fly out to Atlanta in the middle of her big chance of winning over socialite Kim Renfroe. But things go from bad to worse as Audrey’s big chance slips through her fingers and she knows her hopes and dreams of becoming a well established designer are fading away. While she’s in Atlanta however she meets her best friends fiancé’s brother J.R. who’s a whole different kettle of fish, for one he hasn’t stopped gawking at her, but he also seems a lot different to the other guys she’s known.

The thing about this book was that everyone was so nice all the time, it’s like something bad would happen to someone but then everyone would gather around and cheer them up with a sleepover or something else pointless. I felt the bad things weren’t even that bad but because Audrey had all her “girlfriends” around her who she had known for all of two minutes everything would be hunky dory!

The secondary characters from Sherrilyn to Emma I didn’t really get the point of; their constant chirpy moods, knowing friends of friends who could work miracles, basically it’s frustrated me how everything always fell into place for everyone. Is it so wrong of me to want some drama or mayhem?

J.R. didn’t really do it for me either, I know he was meant to come across as a dapper hot guy who rides a Harley, but the only image that remained in my head was J.R. from Dallas, certain names are a no go with me, once I get a certain image in my head about a person it’s kind of hard to get rid of.

Some of the writing was also full of info-dumping, paragraphs and paragraphs about the amount of detail Audrey had to put into measuring mannequins, cutting and measuring fabrics then details about lunch, it was at times pointless. A couple of conversations also went down the same pointless track;

“Please be careful on the road J.R. I will

and wear your helmet.

I always do

oh, that’s right. It’s me who doesn’t she realised

with a giggle. Well zip your jacket and all that.

Will do, and you do the same”

“Dual head stainless steel head gas grill, Andy

continued without notice, with forty- five

thousand BTU, full rotisserie and eleven hundred

square inches of cooking surface. It’s the

champion of excellence and precision in grilling

my friend”

I wished I had liked Always the Designer Never the Bride more, but it had too many always happy characters and perfect endings for my liking.

Thank you Abingdon press and Netgalley for giving me the opportunity to read this book.