The Wedding Dress--A Review

If you tend to shy away from book reviews, feel free to shy away now.

I tend to love them... so they often end up here--especially since I'm reading like a MANIAC right now. So here goes...

Courtesy of Booksneeze

This book is one of the reasons I love reading. First, I love costuming as much as reading, and I spent a year sewing alterations in a bridal shop, so I absolutely love fancy dresses--especially wedding dresses. But that's not the reason I love this book. It was a review copy from the publisher, so I didn't have to pay for it. Also a bonus, but not at all the reason I loved the book, for I am given full permission to review it honestly. And I am utterly honest.

No, nothing is pressuring me to like this book, but it is still likely one of the best-written books I've read this year (or last, for that matter). Great characters for me to sympathize with, lovely stories, good, solid writing, drama and suspense--add to that a bit of magic, a bit of weddingishness, and the mixed up sort of love story where, at several different moments over the last 100 years, couples are trying to figure out what is love and what isn't. Given the pressure of marriage--but, even more so, the pressure place on young people to BE married, to marry the RIGHT person, and often to marry a person for other reasons than love--this book is a lovely intertwining of people struggling to make the right choice, to act for the right reasons, not out of duty or greed or merely good intentions. It's a sort of fictional instruction book about following your heart, your gut, instead of letting distractions push you into a choice you will regret all the more later.

I fell into this book in a way I haven't fallen much lately. It reminded me of the reasons I married, the years of our marriage, and the serious step I took once, all that time ago. And it reminded me of my own wedding dress, which I designed and made myself, from crinoline to lace edging. A lovely book. A little religious, but mainstream in its focus. I would definitely read more by this author, whether the books figured a wedding dress or not!

What about the rest of you? Any good reads? Anything you'd recommend? Anyone going to see the midnight showing of THE HUNGER GAMES?