The Best Day of Someone Else's Life by Kerry Reichs
| The Best Day of Someone Else's Life by Kerry Reichs | |
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| Category: Women's Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Chloe Spooner
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| Summary: A mad year in Vi's life attending far too many weddings, all the while trying to find herself a man. A story with a lot of characters, a lot of weddings and a fair bit of confusion! | |
| Buy? Maybe | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 368 | Date: June 2008 |
| Publisher: Orion | |
| ISBN: 978-0752891217 | |
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Vi Connelly loves weddings, and it's a good job that she does really. She attended her first wedding when she was just 6 years old, and caught the wedding bug from there! Vi knows that a wedding is meant to be the Best Day of Your Life, and can't wait for her own wedding. But now in her twenties, Vi finds herself becoming a bridesmaid over and over again for all of her friends, leaving Vi wondering if she'll ever get to be the bride. Vi still loves loser ex-boyfriend Caleb, and can't seem to move on from him, so will she ever have the Best Day of HER Life?
I haven't read many novels based around weddings, so this was going to be a relatively new theme to me, leaving me not having many expectations about this book, and with an open mind about the story too. The character of Vi is a very good, strong main female one and works well as the first person narrative voice in this book. She's very likeable, as her dialogue is very honest and easy to read, and really endears you to her character. She's a very realistic person, from being tired of being a bridesmaid over and over to worrying about finding the love of her life.
The weddings were the other main theme in the book, without a doubt and they were very well done. The author has very cleverly made sure that each wedding featured in the book was different in some way, even if we knew barely anything about the bride and groom. The first few weddings in the book were Vi's close friends, so we knew the characters and the weddings were written about in more detail. However, the latter half of the book featured a wedding every other chapter, so we didn't really meet any of the brides or grooms, they were briefly mentioned by Vi and then the story quickly moved on again.
This was my main problem with the book. I felt there were just too many characters to keep up with! The main character Vi was very well written but she had two groups of friends, one in her hometown and the other where she now lives and works. There were about four friends in each group, and I was constantly getting confused between the two groups and all the different names. I kept having to flick back in the book to check up on who was who, and it was really hampering my enjoyment of the book as I felt I couldn't properly keep track of it, and I got frustated at constantly having to go back and forth between the pages.
The main plot line was really Vi and her love life, and the discovery of Vi's feeling about this as the book progressed. This was really well done, as Vi's character was developing throughout the book at a believable pace and you were feeling for Vi through every wedding she had to go through as well. Her ex-boyfriend Caleb was also well written, clearly a character you are meant to hate, but who you could also see why Vi fell for him despite what a horrible man he was! There weren't really any other strong males in the book, and I felt this was a shame as it really lacked a male influence, and took nearly three-quarters of the book for a decent male character to appear.
Unfortunately, I was left feeling very relieved as I turned the last page of this book. I just felt I had to concentrate too hard to enjoy it properly, and I couldn't keep up with the characters as there were just too many of them to follow easily. Although the main character of Vi was well written, the rest of the novel is a bit of a let-down, dragging a bit particularly towards the middle with too many weddings, too many characters and sadly that lets it down a lot for me, and I won't be hurrying to read more material from this author again.
I'd like to thank the publishers for sending a copy to The Bookbag.
If you do enjoy books about weddings then we can recommend Wedding Season by Katie Fforde.
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You can read more book reviews or buy The Best Day of Someone Else's Life by Kerry Reichs at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free.
You can read more book reviews or buy The Best Day of Someone Else's Life by Kerry Reichs at Amazon.com.
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Angela Ellis said:
I have just finished this and really annoyed my neighbour because reading it in the garden I kept laughing out loud so she has to read it too. As long as you remember the main D.C. friends group the rest seem to slot in. I don't read much in the way of girlie fiction preferring to read her mother's books, but I thoroughly enjoyed this and would read any more she wrote.
