The Wedding Girl

February 23, 2009
The usually reliable Wickham (Shopaholic series author Sophie Kinsella's alter ego) falters with this overplotted and heavy-handed smorgasbord of weddings and family shenanigans. Upon meeting wedding photographer Alexander Gilbert, Milly Havill realizes that he had photographed her when she first married 10 years earlier. Since that wedding was done as a favor to help keep Allan Kepinski, the American half of a gay couple, in England, Milly never told anyone about it, including her now-fiancé, Simon Pinnacle. The thought of Alexander revealing her past sends Milly into a panic. But that's just the beginning: Simon is bent on bettering his multimillionaire father in business and in marriage; Milly's bitter father, James, seems to appreciate Milly's independent older sister, Isobel, more than Milly; Isobel gets pregnant and is certain the father would not want a baby; and Rupert, the other half of the couple Milly had helped out, is now a born-again Christian. Unfortunately, the characters' struggles with identity, abortion and homosexuality are filtered through strained prose and too-obvious setups. A lighter touch and a tighter story would have helped.

Starred review from September 28, 2009
As Milly Havill prepares for her elaborate wedding to the precisely perfect man, she doesn't give a thought to her frivolous past—not until the photographer mentions seeing her on her previous wedding day 10 years before. Panic-stricken, Milly seeks out the foreign (and gay) husband she never divorced and brings all manner of intimate secrets and emotional reckonings to light. Brimming with humor, quirky characters and heartfelt compassion, the story is further enhanced by the talents of Katherine Kellgren, who hurdles a range of voices, male and female, London shop girl, Oxford academic and upper-crust English solicitor. A St. Martin's hardcover (Reviews, Feb. 23).