The Wedding Diaries

by Sam Binnie

[Leah]

I have a bit of a confession to make: I’m really not a wedding fan. As a 22-year-old single girl, I am loathe to read books about weddings or babies, or anything like that. I generally find them to be a bit boring. It’s generally not my scene. Weddings just do not interest me – I find the expense to be extreme and although I do believe in marriage, I just think a wedding is an excuse to spend as much money as you like and throw a big ol’ party. Weddings make people (brides, mostly) crazy. However, I do enjoy a good book about a wedding, as long as the crazy isn’t too crazy and the wedding talk isn’t boring/long-winded. So when I received The Wedding Diaries to review, I was very interested. I like diary-based books, and after reading the first page I knew this would be a wedding book I’d enjoy, and I did.

The Wedding Diaries is rather self-explanatory, as Kiki Carlow, after being proposed to by her fiance Thom (who, by the way, sounds like the perfect man!), decides that the best way to remember her wedding and the planning of that wedding, is to start a diary recounting every thing that she does in the run up to her August wedding to Thom. It’s simple and it’s executed perfectly. Especially since the book isn’t all weddings. I mean, it is all weddings, but it’s not in a bad way. Not only is Kiki planning her own wedding, but as part of her job at publishers Polka Dot, she’s also helping celeb Jacki write a book all about her own wedding. It’s such a simple idea with an even better format – a diary is perfect, and it works perfectly. There is a bit of a lack of dialogue (obviously), but Kiki Carlow is such a warm and engaging heroine that it doesn’t really matter. The way she recounts things is so Kiki that you don’t need to hear all the conversations and dialogue.

I really enjoyed the novel. It’s a brilliant idea for a book, excecuted simply but perfectly, but mostly, it had a cast of fab characters. Kiki is a Kinsella-worthy heroine and she makes the book light up. She has such warmth and personality and it just shines through in her diary entries. Husband-to-be Thom is also rather swoon-worthy, seeming to be the perfect groom. Yes, he’s a bit prickly on the money subject, but who isn’t, frankly? I’d have liked to have seen more of Kiki’s sister Susie, who could have been a perfect (and humourous) foil for Kiki’s madness had she been a bit more involved. She could have pulled Kiki back from the brink of wedding madness, if she’d only not been pregnant. I absolutely adored Jacki, as well, the down-to-Earth celeb who is writing her own wedding book, for the masses. The only fly in the ointment I suppose was that Kiki’s mother doesn’t speak to her for ages, and we never really learn why. Yes, we can presume it’s because Kiki doesn’t want to hear her mother’s opinion on anything, but it’s never actually said so we can only assume and I didn’t really get that vibe from Kiki’s mother – that she’d be happy to just not talk to her daughter. It seemed odd.

Overall, though, I thoroughly enjoyed The Wedding Diaries. I’m so pleased it’s the first in a trilogy with The Baby Diaries (uh-oh) and The Homemaker Diaries to come. As a non-baby fan, The Baby Diaries terrifies me, but it seems as though it’s going to be a bit like Kinsella and Shopaholic and Baby, rather than a bad thing and from the preview at the end of The Wedding Diaries, it seems great, too, so I’m actually really looking forward to picking it up. I’d thoroughly recommend The Wedding Diaries. Binnie is a warm, funny, and engaging author and Kinsella fans will just love her (and Kiki for that matter!). I can’t wait for more from Kiki Carlow, she’s definitely a heroine to remember and I just adored the book.