Review: "The Wedding Writer" by Susan Schneider

When you think about a book focused around the lives of four women who work for a wedding magazine you’re thinking frilly beach read, right? Wrong. Well, at least in the case of The Wedding Writer by Susan Schneider. Lucky is a young, single woman with a less-than-desirable past who is determined to claw her way to the top of the chain at Your Wedding magazine. Grace is the formidable woman who has been at the helm of Your Wedding for years, but what she doesn’t forsee is that the magazine will be looking to replace her with younger blood. Sara is one heck of a bridal fashion editor who secretly covets the seemingly perfect lives that her two sisters are leading while she slaves away at the office night after night. Felice is happily married to her artist husband, but she has problems of her own. Her teenaged son remains distant and unreachable to her despite her best efforts. These four women, incredibly different, all long for the same thing: their own happily-ever-after.

Although a little slow to start, The Wedding Writer examines the lives of these four women with surprising depth. We get to know each of the characters quite well as the story progresses and we find that although they seem to have it all together on the outside, they are all fighting their personal demons. The funny thing for me was that although I didn’t particularly like any of these women because their personalities at work were so abrasive, I did hope that each woman would be able to find some resolutions in their personal lives, leading to their own happy endings. And when those happy endings did inevitably come, I was pleased with how everything turned out, and that not everything ended up wrapped up with a tiny bow. I like my endings to leave a little to the imagination, and Schneider certainly delivered in this respect.

Filled with unique and interesting characters, and offering suprising insight into what goes on behind the pages of a wedding magazine, The Wedding Writer is sure to appeal to fans of women's fiction with substance.

Rating: 3.75 stars out of 5
Challenges: 2011 100+ Reading Challenge