“I picked up this book primarily because it's a contemporary romance that revolves around someone involved in the wedding industry. With my own contemporary romance featuring a wedding planner set to release in January 2009, I'm very curious about the seeming influx of books in the past few months (and coming out over the next few) that center around weddings/the wedding industry.
In For Better or for Worse, Wendy Hartline is a forty-four year old widow who runs a wedding chapel in the Smokey Mountains of Tennessee. Her husband of twenty years died three years ago. She has a twenty-three-year-old daughter whose husband just walked out on her and a nineteen year old son who's away in college. Wendy is dating college professor Logan, whom I'll discuss in a moment. However, it's Marco Amorini who is of primary concern. You see, the playboy divorce lawyer has just purchased the building next door to Wendy's wedding chapel. He's converting it into a "Lodge" which includes a restaurant and hotel/honeymoon retreat--in direct competition with the four honeymoon cabins Wendy owns.
Though Wendy finds Marco attractive, her opinion of him is originally colored by Logan's nasty attitude toward Marco. Marco was Logan's ex-wife's divorce lawyer. In the way of most romance novels, Wendy and Marco are constantly thrown together by circumstances. And it doesn't matter when or where they're together, whether they're having a pleasant conversation, whether Wendy's legs have just given out on her (she has a condition) and she's in Marco's arms, or whether Wendy and Marco are at each other's throats, Logan is sure to show up. So sure, in fact, that it gets downright annoying--a little too over-the-top when it comes to creating conflict. It made me feel like Logan may be a stalker.
Not only does Logan show up at very inopportune moments, he is one of the most selfish, self-centered, immature characters I've had the displeasure of reading in a very long time. When Marco invites Wendy and her entire family, including Logan, to dine at the Lodge, Logan, like a petulant three-year-old, gripes about everything, from his steak being tough to his coffee being cold. He's rude to Marco and snaps at Wendy and ends up walking out. Not only does he never apologize to Wendy for his behavior, his behavior and attitude toward Marco worsens.
From the beginning of the novel, I didn't understand why Wendy would have been seeing someone like Logan--he had no redeeming qualities that were shown to the reader. But as his behavior worsened, I found it harder and harder to want to continue reading the book. Wendy came across as a codependent pushover when it came to Logan. Though it was part of her character arc for her to go from being the kind of person who wants to please everyone at her own expense to someone who'll stand up for herself, I still found it highly unlikely--and unlikable--that Wendy would put up with Logan as long as she did. Especially once he started dropping by unannounced, calling after he said he wouldn't (and calling multiple times, demanding an explanation for why she hadn't been home when he called the first time) and, basically, showing all the signs of being an overbearing, possessive, manipulative, jealous STALKER.
In the last quarter of the book, when Logan goes away for a conference, my enjoyment of the story really picked up. Wendy and Marco, aside from owning businesses next door to each other, are brought even closer together when they discover his daughter and her son (the nineteen-year-old) are engaged. At first, Marco wants Wendy's help to break them up. But Wendy, who married even younger and had a happy marriage (Marco's ended badly), ends up supporting the kids (though makes a big mistake and nearly breaks them up after making the decision to support them--which was very realistic and well-written conflict).
Here are the reasons why, even though I enjoyed reading this book, I couldn't give it five stars:
--Logan. I hated him. His character was way over the top when it came to his attitude, jealousy, and STALKING of Wendy. And it took her until just a few pages before the end of the book to finally break up with him. If this hadn't been on my reading list, I might have put the book down about halfway through out of frustration and not finished reading it.
--POV. The book is written in first person, present tense, my LEAST favorite POV (of course, that's because I've never been forced to read anything written in second person).
--Not really wedding-industry related. Wendy really could have been the owner of any small business threatened by the hero opening a similar business next door. No weddings played any role in the story. And aside from putting Marco at odds with Logan--because Marco was the ex-wife's lawyer--the fact that Marco is a divorce lawyer doesn't really have any impact on the story.
--At one point in the story, when Marco and Wendy are discussing Logan's attitude toward Marco, Marco hints that there's more to the story, that Wendy shouldn't believe everything Logan says about what happened when Logan's wife left him. But this is never followed up on, leaving me wondering if Logan's wife left him because he was an overbearing, possessive, manipulative, jealous STALKER.
What I did like:
--Subtle, realistic Christian worldview. In the very end, when Wendy is trying to get her daughter to pray, to choose to develop a relationship with God, she does push a little bit, but it was in a very realistic way. The daughter, however, told Wendy that she (the daughter) couldn't have a relationship with God just because Wendy (the mom) did; again, very realistic. Wendy's spiritual journey is subtle, as is Marco's (in fact, Marco's reconciliation to God is really just hinted at and never actually expounded upon).
--Once Logan was out of the picture, the story picked up pace and seemed less oppressive.
--I read in the acknowledgments that Diann thanked her crit partners for forcing her to put her characters into conflict, and not to hold back or let them out of it easily. While in one area (Logan) it was overdone, the rest of the conflicts in the story were relatable and made me truly sympathize with Wendy. Some of them were quite predictable, while others came out of the blue.
A good read that I would recommend to anyone interested in reading a romance that's more on the "hen lit" side of the genre than an actual "romance."”
Kaye Dacus wrote this review Wednesday, May 28 2008.
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