Save the Date

by Morgan Matson

From the author of Since You've Been Gone and The Unexpected Everything comes a dreamy story of summer romance and finding yourself, perfect for fans of Jenny Han and Sarah Dessen

Charlie Grant tries to keep her life as normal as possible. Hanging out with her best friend, pining for Jesse Foster - who she’s loved since she was twelve - and generally flying under the radar as much as she can. 

But sometimes normal is just another word for stuck, and this weekend that's all going to change. Not only will everyone be back home for her sister’s wedding, but she’s also juggling:

- a rented dog that just won't stop howling
- an unexpectedly hot wedding-coordinator’s nephew
- her favourite brother bringing home his HORRIBLE new girlfriend
- fear that her parents’ marriage is falling apart
- and the return to town of the boy she’s loved practically all her life…

Over the course of four days Charlie will learn there's so much more to each member of her family than she imagined, even herself, and that maybe letting go of the things she's been holding on tightest to can help her find what really keeps them together.


Praise for Morgan Matson: 

Amy & Roger's Epic Detour
"Funny and heartwarming, we love Amy & Roger's Epic Detour" - Bliss
"Strong literary romance, this is an ideal summer read choice" - The Bookseller
"A near perfect summer read" - Publisher's Weekly, starred review

And Second Chance Summer...
"Absolutely huge recommendation. Matson has become my favourite contemporary author." The Bookbag
"Heart-wrenching and beautifully portrayed" Prettybooks

And Since You've Been Gone...
"A heartwarming story of loss, taking risks, new beginnings and self-discovery along the journey" - The Guardian
 

• ISBN10: 1471163881
• ISBN13: 9781471163883
• Publish Date: 14 June 2018 (first published 5 June 2018)
• Publish Status: Out of Stock
• Out of Print: 7 December 2022
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Imprint: Simon & Schuster Childrens Books
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 432
• Language: English

Reviews

[ladygrey]

This is a pretty funny book. I laughed out loud a few times which is pretty rare.

The thing that works is the dynamic between the siblings. Their funny and sweet and honest and they're pretty entertaining.

The romance is pretty much what you expect from the first few pages. But it's not the main storyline so that's not really a problem. It works to accent everything else.

But Charlie... she's a decent enough protagonist, especially when she's handling wedding stuff. But in the third act she's so naive and petty that isn't annoying. For the most part, she just wants everything to go back to the way it was. Which isn't so bad as far as wistful nostalgia goes. But her attitude toward Mike, and that awful line she has while their eating cake severed so much goodwill for her. She so flippant in telling Mike he said things he didn't mean and he should just apologize for it. But he did mean them and he should have! And for Charlie, for the entire family, not to recognize that and call her out on it soured that whole sub-plot. The upside is that Charlie's arc is reasonable and works pretty well. There's just those few parts that could have been easily edited so they weren't so inane.

Also, speaking of the feud... their mother sacrificed her son for the sake of her career. And she uses the lame excuse that the syndicate really wanted it and thought it was funny - why was she telling them in the first place?! She betrayed her son's privacy and she doesn't even apologize. The apology in the strip seemed significant but also a kind of cowardly way to deal with the whole thing. I get that some of that was to create conflict, but if anyone had stood up to her for Mike, if what she did had split the family then it would have created more conflict, not less. Save the Date does such a good job creating a dimensional family that it could have kept the lighthearted, warm tone and banter and still let in an undercurrent of resentment and strife to it wouldn't have been so terribly one sided.

As annoying and poorly handled as that is, it's just a sub-plot. And the banter and shenanigans among the siblings makes this a pretty fun read.

[Bianca]

— It was decent, though I mostly skimmed towards the end. Reading this didn’t feel like reading a book to be honest, and I hated that it didn’t. I couldn’t care less about anyone, except the dog. The dog was the best.

[liz089]

Ohhh this one was SO MUCH FUN !! I loved it so much !!
The main character is great, the side characters are awesome, I love the whole Grant family so much 3 I was completely sucked into the story and it kept with me in between reading, wanting to go back to that family ! It was endearing, fun, cute, sad... some romance too... Just a very fun read !!!

[Kelly]

Guests are descending on the Connecticut Grant residence for the pending nuptials of daughter Linnea Grant and fiancée Rodney Daniels, an extravagant farewell to the stately home. Youngest sibling Charlotte Grant is delighted that her siblings will be in attendance, the idolised Sheridan now residing in California, bride Linnea, Jameison and estranged brother Michael. The Grant siblings have embellished syndicate pages for over twenty five years within the fictional Grant Central Station, a weekly illustrated comic created by their mother Eleanor Grant, now reaching a conclusion with a series of celebratory events and appearances coinciding with the pending nuptials of sister Linnea and nostalgic farewell to the endearing family residence.

BIG, LOUD, DELIGHTFULLY MESSY FAMILIES

The Grant siblings are wonderful. Typically families portrayed within young adult literature are rarely present or created as a character of superiority, the Grant siblings are blemished. The narrative focus is on seventeen year old Charlie. Charlie understands the significance of the upcoming celebrations, the youngest Grant sibling is feeling displaced. Eldest sibling Danny is Charlie's partner in crime, so when Danny surprises the family by bringing home a new girlfriend from California, Charlie begins to see the imperfections within the brother she idolised. Linnie is becoming increasingly overwhelmed by her nuptials, a missing wedding planner and feuding relatives, brother J.J is desperately seeking a date to the event and estranged brother Mike has chosen to stay with friend James, Charlie's crush. Over the course of three days of celebrations, I fell in love with the compassionate, boisterous and completely imperfect Grant family.

A TOUCH OF SWOON

For a narrative that takes place during wedding celebrations, the romance was virtually non existent. There is however, plenty of moments to swoon. For the past several years, Charlie has held a flame for James, Mike's best friend that until recently, seemed to be an unrequited love affair. James is a nice young man but he's certainly no Bill, the nephew of the new wedding planner. Bill and Charlie together are lovely and I enjoyed their subtle flirtations. With the amount of mayhem and adventure afoot, their friendship and attraction felt genuine. #TeamBill

PEE YOUR PANTS A LITTLE

Snorting, unattractive laughter. The kitchen is often the heart of every home, especially for the Grant family. The reader is welcomed into their boisterous, frantic home where the coffee is freshly brewed and siblings feud over the last doughnut. Their familiarity is lovely. The banter and sarcasm providing plenty of laugh out loud moments.

I absolutely loved it. Morgan Matson is a phenomenal contemporary author, creating genuine characters and a sincere storyline of perfectly imperfect families. Infused with humour, mayhem and adventure, Save The Date is a feel great read and instant classic.

[girlinthepages]

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.For me, books about weddings are right up there with books about royalty or food- they're indulgent, fun, and never get old no matter how many times I read about them. After recently reading and loving Matson's The Unexpected Everything, I found that I fell back in love with her writing again and couldn't wait to dive into Save the Date not just because of the wedding aspect, but because of the emphasis on family. Literally, the family is so large and so important that there's a list of all of the family members' names, ages, and role they play in the wedding at the beginning of the book, which was SO helpful and which I LOVED because it's like instead of a map of a world, it's a map of relationships, setting the stage for the important role of family in the novel.


The story's protagonist is Charlie, a high school senior who's thrilled to have all of her older siblings under one roof for a rare weekend as her sister is getting married at their family home. As the cover implies, what follows are a comedy of errors when basically everything that you think could go wrong at a wedding does (to the point where Matson was writing such chaotic scenes that I was getting stressed just reading them!) In addition to the seven family members, there is the groom's family, the bridesmaids, the groomsmen, and a disgruntled beagle all staying under one room in the Grant's charmingly eccentric house. Matson's ability as a writer to make each character, especially all of the siblings, have their own distinct personalities amidst the chaos of the plot, was truly impressive, as is her ability to write fleshed out characters in memorable stories that readers will care about in a stand alone novel format.



Yet what really made this story of family stand out was the extremely creative element of Grant Central station, the comic strip that Charlie's mother writes that heavily borrows on her family's real life happenings. The strip has grown up alongside the characters, and it's made them semi-celebrities, with the wedding also culminating in the comic's last strip. Panels from the strip are incorporated here and there throughout the novel (and were super fun to read!) and Matson cleverly weaves together the drama and memories of the actual Grants into those that belong to the fictional, comic Grants, until it's hard for Charlie to discern between the two. The novel touched on a lot of deeper, more profound issues about privacy, the elevated view we can have of our older siblings, how much we let ourselves be defined by those we're related to, etc. The story had touches of depth among a LOT of humor and witty dialogue, and I caught myself laughing out loud more than once (especially when JJ was involved- seriously, can I please have a spinoff novel about his crazy antics? Or about any/all of the Grant siblings? OR a book full of Grant Central station comic strips?) However, given that there were SO many characters in this book, I do wish we had received more closure regarding some of them (especially Brooke).



There were also a lot of fun cameos by characters from The Unexpected Everything, including Andie, Clark, and Andie's dad. It all felt very natural and Save the Date is clearly set a few years in the future, but it was really fun seeing some of Matson's previous characters make appearances, especially in ways that were sort of related to the plot and not just casual run ins. It made me feel like Matson's creating a contemporary universe without trying too hard and the two books just seem to flow together really well...fingers crossed that we'll get cameos from some of the Grants in her next book!



A few bonus favorite things I have to mention:

+ The alarm was one of the funniest running bits I've read in a contemporary in a long time

+ WAFFLES

+ Billiam is apparently a real name

+ CAPTURE THE FLAG aka the BEST MIDDLE SCHOOL ERA OUTDOORS GAME EVER

+ Walla-BYE (and giant blown up pictures of the Hemsworth brothers)

+Never trust anyone named after a fruit

+ "scoff"

+ Hilarious alternative chapter titles

+Feuds with neighbors over gardening competitions



Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I realize how much I adored this book and getting to know the Grant family. My ONLY complaints are that I could have done completely without the romance element- like 110% could have done without it, since it was such a minor part of the story. Also, Charlie could be very stubborn and border on annoying, but I'm glad her BFF called her out on her behavior.



Overall: Save the Date is one of the best family-centered YA novels I've ever read. It's hilarious with characters so realistic that you'll feel like you just spent a weekend in the Grant household by the time you finish reading. This review was originally posted on Girl in the Pages