Leah
Written on Jun 18, 2013
Ailsa Stuart has had a bit of a hard time of late so when her cousin Jess emails to invite her to her wedding – stating that it’s a matter of life or death – Ailsa decides to go. It’s an all expenses paid trip to Italy, even if she has to put up with her crazy family for a week. The last thing Ailsa expects when she rocks up to Saint Lucia is to bump into Nick, the man she left just months prior. With Jess’s wedding in uproar, and her and Nick arguing at every turn, not to mention Arthur the meddlesome dog, it’s turning out to be a holiday like no other for Ailsa.
I was really excited to get stuck into Save the Date, I love novels set in foreign destinations and Italy is a country I most definitely want to visit, something that was brought even closer by reading this novel! I liked the idea for the plot, how it was all in chaos etc, but I did sorta feel there were a few too many different strands, and there was certainly tons of uncertainty and suspicion not usually found in a Chick Lit novel. I just thought that perhaps certain bits of the novel could have been scaled down a bit more, particularly the Charles plotline which made me want to vomit whenever he appeared. But overall I actually really liked the novel.
Yes, I will admit it took me a while to see Nick’s appeal – when Ailsa tells you what he did you want her to run as far away as possible, and I’m not entirely sure there’s was a sure-fire happy ever after, either. Perhaps Ailsa just saw something I didn’t! What did make the novel for me was Arthur, never have I fallen so hard for a fictional dog! He was awesome; he lit up every page he was in and I wanted to scoop him up and have him to myself. I adored him. Overall, I enjoyed Save the Date, it was a quick read, very well written (although Allie still loves her semi-colons) and I look forward to Allie’s next offering, she’s firmly established herself on my must read list.