Thirteen Weddings

by Paige Toon

[Leah]

Paige Toon is hands down one of my favourite Chick Lit authors – she writes warm, witty characters, set in some pretty fantastic destinations, and she has that easy writing style I adore. So it goes without saying that a new Paige Toon book is an exciting thing to behold – especially when it’s Toon’s second novel of 2014 following her young adult debut novel The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson in January. I had such very high hopes for Thirteen Weddings – it has probably one of my favourite Toon covers, ever – and that’s saying a lot considering it’s in her new style, which has taken a while to grow on me (but grow on me it has) and I thought the entire novel just sounded super interesting. Sadly, though, I was kind of disappointed with the novel.

Thirteen Weddings ticks all the Toon boxes – there’s the love triangle that is ever present (and which, if I’m being totally honest, I’ve sort of had enough of), the characters are just as warm as always, and Toon’s writing style is spot-on, but there just felt like there was something missing from the entire novel, and I don’t know what it was. For me, the obligatory love triangle lacked any traction. For starters, I was never entirely convinced by Alex or Bronte or their feelings for each other. Their chemistry in the Prologue was off the charts, but it just completely fizzled out beyond that (and rightly so – it was a year and a bloody half later when they met again, let’s be honest) and I just couldn’t bring myself to root for them to somehow make it work, despite the fact Alex is not only engaged to the girl he was on a break from when he and Bronte slept together, but they’re planning their wedding! It just made Bronte’s feelings seem not at all worthy; I couldn’t understand them myself – it was 18 months ago, I just sort of felt like she should have been over it by then, instead of hankering away for Alex repeatedly throughout the novel. He wasn’t that interesting.

The other reason I’m so down on Alex is the fact that Lachie, a new arrival a little way into the novel, completely blows Alex out of the water. As soon as Lachie arrives, it’s a case of, “Alex who?”. Lachie was full of life, full of mischief – the kind of mischief that makes you instantly fall in love. Anybody who sings at a wedding, hits on the photographer (Bronte) and reckons she’s gonna sleep with him on the first night (not unlike Bronte, to be fair; she has previous) is cheeky to the extreme, and that was Lachie all over. He just exuded charm and persona, and he made Alex look second best, time and time again. How Bronte could still moon over Alex when Lachie was in the picture was beyond me, and I wanted to do nothing more than to slap some sense into her! For a successful love triangle to work, there has to be tension and there has to be a reason the person in the middle of the triangle is stuck in the middle of the triangle, and for me Bronte had absolutely no reason (and no right) to be in the middle of any kind of love triangle that featured Alex, Alex who is engaged. It doesn’t matter what Alex had to say for himself: he was taken, and until that wasn’t the reality, I was completely unable to comprehend Bronte’s “love” for him, because it seemed like child’s play.

I would absolutely have loved to have written a glowing, positive review of Thirteen Weddings, but I just felt let down. I very much enjoyed bits of the novel – Bronte has some pretty amazing friends, who help keep the novel from sinking to far down, and I enjoyed the whole wedding aspect of the novel, visiting all thirteen weddings with Bronte, they were fun, and added something else to the novel, but I just mostly felt let down. I finished the novel feeling deflated, mostly because I suspect Toon isn’t done with Alex/Bronte/Lachie. I can foresee a sequel in the future, and I’m not sure it’s something I will be reading. I felt like come the end of the novel, Bronte had settled. Yes, she talks about being in love, feeling love, but it didn’t ring true, it didn’t ring right, I didn’t feel like she was talking about the person she ended up with. That makes me so sad for her to be so indecisive. I must mention, before I finish, that there is a sub-plot about Bronte where she hates churches, and there’s a reveal behind that, which was… Unusual. Unexpected. It sort of came out of nowhere, for someone who writes light-hearted women’s fiction, it jarred a little bit to throw in something so serious. Overall, it was a so-so novel. It had bright spots – Lachie made the book shine, the fact we saw some older characters again made me squeal with delight and Toon’s writing is solid as ever, I just didn’t really care about the characters as much as I should, with the exception of Lachie, whom I absolutely adored.