Book Review: Wedding Bride and Doom by Mary Karnes (Wedding Planner Mysteries #1)

Stars: 3 out of 5

Pros: Kate and the rest of the characters; good pacing

Cons: Needed a little more connection; Kate's stupidity at the climax

The Bottom Line:

When florist is killed

Kate must try to clear her name

Uneven debut

Fatal Flowers

When I first heard about Wedding Bride and Doom, I thought it sounded like fun, so I put it on my list.  Not only that, but it was the first book from Mary Karnes, and I do enjoy finding new authors just as their career is getting started.  Unfortunately, in this case, the book still needed a little work.

The story introduces us to Kate Ludlow, who has moved back from Southern California to her hometown in Connecticut.  As a result of her divorce, her hobby of planning weddings in Southern California is now her profession as she tries to build her clientele in Connecticut to support her and her teenage daughter.

Moving home has also meant reconnecting with friends and family.  And some frenemies.  One of those is Lori-Sue.  They have a complicated history, but are trying to work together since Kate loves the flower arrangements that Lori-Sue puts together.  When Kate stops in one day to place an order, she finds Lori-Sue dead in the backroom.  The evidence seems to all be pointing Kate's way, however.  And the case also means she has to reconnect with her high school boyfriend, who broke her heart, since he is the lead detective on the case.  Being naturally nosey, Kate starts to poke around.  Can she figure out what is going on?

I quickly got invested in the story.  We aren't that many pages in before Kate finds Lori-Sue's body, and I'm always happy with a book gets off to a quick start.  One of Kate's clients wants her to find a family heirloom as well, and that storyline captured my interest.  The pacing was pretty steady overall.

But the further we went into the story, the more the problems started to emerge.  There were details that came at us late in the book that I felt we should have learned earlier about Kate.  I get it, an author has a fine balancing job, especially in a first book in a series, to introduce everything and start the story.  But just a line or two would have helped.

This also applied to the plotting; at times I felt like we were learning random things, making the book feel disjointed, but only as we neared the end did everything we were learning begin to come together.  And a couple of developments seemed like a bit of a leap to me.

Then there's the climax.  Don't get me wrong, all of our questions are answered.  And I was turning pages to see how everything was going to turn out.  But, the only way it worked was for Kate to do the stupidest thing possible.  Usually, I'm pretty forgiving of characters being stupid, but there was no excusing it in this case.

Which is a shame because I really like Kate, her daughter, and the others who populate Kate's life.  And this book sets up some very interesting storylines for future books in the series, especially with that cliffhanger ending.  But I'm not sure I would be willing enough to try the next in the series.

Each chapter has a small wedding tip at the beginning.  There are some longer ones at the end as well as three delicious sounding recipes at the end.

For some people, the climax will be a deal killer for them.  Others will enjoy the characters and not care as much about that.  For me, I'm wishing Wedding Bride and Doom was a better debut.