For Better or Worse (The Wedding Party - Sophie King)

Member Name: abbadabbado

Product:	The Wedding Party - Sophie King
Date:	26/07/09 (77 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: an interesting idea

Disadvantages: disbelievable scenes

Ever since reading Sophie King's first novel, I have looked forward to reading her latest offerings. The Wedding Party is her latest instalment so when I spotted it on Amazon I quickly threw it into my basket for a treat.

Anyone who has read anything by Sophie King will know that she divides her novels up by characters. Each chapter switches from character to character. I wasn't sure I would like this style of writing, worried I would lose the plot literally, but over time I have realised that the style of writing is unique and actually easy to follow.
Knowing what you're getting from King I think helps the reader to understand and get involved in the plot quicker than if you didn't know what was happening.

The Wedding Party focuses on the planning of a wedding. The wedding is taking place between Geoff and Monique, neither of which are focused on as the main characters. Somehow this doesn't matter and you still learn plenty about each of them and travel with them up to the main event at the end of the book.

Helen is Geoff's ex wife. We meet Helen early on in the book and learn that she is quite confused and probably happier on her own than in a relationship. I think Helen is portrayed as wishing she could be happy on her own but at the same time being drawn to the wrong men for the wrong reasons. Helen is a gardener and she proves to be a string link between the characters that intermingle between the other characters in the book because of this.

Becky is Helen and Geoff's daughter. She has a busy career and an unhappy nanny who looks after her two unruly children. With a long suffering husband who also travels too much for business, the family is in huge danger of drifting apart. Becky can't quite manage the balance between work and family life.

Mel is the village vicar. I found Mel to be quite a strange character to start with and kept forgetting who she was and why she was in the book. This was a shame as I found she tended to encourage me to forget the plot slightly.
Mel's teenage daughter Amy has an accident at the start of the book and spends the duration in a coma. This of course brings all kinds of emotions from Mel as well as trying to stay a focused vicar and look after a stroppy teenage son, and vacant husband.

Janie is one of Becky's oldest friends and never seems to get anything right. You do feel very sorry for Janie straight away and follow her as she tries to get a weddings and funeral business off the ground. Alongside her pensioner friend Marjorie, we see the ups and downs of Janie's business and personal life.

There are a lot of characters in this book despite only being four main chapter characters that we flit between as a reader. Each character does seem to merge with everyone in one way or another, whether that is in the present or past.
I found this easy to understand as a frequent reader of King, but I do think in this book she hasn't written to her strengths. There were a lot of unbelievable scenes where I knew that wouldn't happen in reality, but for some reason was happening in this book.
With the main event and focus of the book being the wedding of Geoff and Monique, we have to travel through the nine months leading up to the wedding learning new things about everyone's lives, and see if they actually will end up getting married at the end.

Overall this novel hasn't been as good as others, but I still found it easy to pick up and put down again so it makes for a nice easy read.

ISBN: 978-0340935415
Price: £4.55 Amazon
Published: 2009-07-26

Summary: an ok offering by Sophie King