Nearlyweds

by Beth Kendrick

[Leah]

For a while now, I’ve wanted to try one of Beth Kendrick’s novels. Her books keep appearing on Amazon, so when I got myself an Amazon voucher, I bought myself a few second-hand American novels, to whet my new-found love of American chick-lit. I choose Nearlyweds of Beth Kendrick’s five or six novels as it appealed to me the most, and I wanted to see how Kendrick would handle three newlyweds finding out their marriage is a sham. It’s taken me a few weeks to get around to it, but I wanted a fairly quick light read when I woke up early one morning and this fit the bill perfectly.

Nearlyweds has a very interesting concept, in that Stella, Casey and Erin are all married by the same pastor. The pastor is unwell, though, and passes away before he’s able to sign off on their marriages, leaving each girl having to decide whether they want to make their marriages official, or if the pastor’s death was a lucky escape for them. Each of the girls are different to each other, but because they live in the same place, they do become friends and allies when it comes to resolving the problems in their marriages and they help each other through it all as they decide whether to stick with their men, or twist. The book was definitely light-weight, and it was just what I was looking for for a lazy Saturday afternoon.

The girls in the book are all wonderful. There’s Stella, who is thought of as a gold-digger because she married Mark, who’s thirty years her senior. But that’s so far from the truth, all Stella wanted was to be married to the husband she loved and have a baby with him. Mark, her husband, however lied to her about a vasectomy, leaving her heart-broken and confused. Erin, on the other hand, is blissfully in love with husband Mark, but her mother-in-law Renee will do anything she can to break them up, including putting peanuts in Erin’s food despite the fact she’s allergic (!). Finally there’s Casey, married to the boy she’s loved since High School, but who doesn’t seem to want to be married to her – until she finally gets tought and chucks him out, that is! Three very different tales, but three very intriguing tales.

I was totally taken in with all three tales, and I was thoroughly interested in how it would all pan out and who would stay together and who would bite the dust. There are a couple of different twists relating to each marriage, but I liked how it all ended up by the conclusion of the novel. Throw in a rescuse dog named Cash (after Johnny Cash), and it is an enjoyable novel. I also found Erin’s mother-in-law to be hilariously embarrassing in her efforts to oust her daughter-in-law. She’s the nightmare mother-in-law you don’t want to be landed with, that’s for sure and she was definitely the villian of the piece.

The book is told in first-person, from all three girl’s perspective. It was a strange approach as if there are multiple narrators it’s usually done in third-person, but it worked. The book wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read and I did find the male personalities in the book to be a tad weak (David in particular, though he was my favourite male). But it is what it is: It’s a quick and easy to digest Chick Lit novel. There’s nothing terrible about it, but there’s nothing entirely memorable either. I’ll definitely be picking up Kendrick’s other novels as she managed to keep my attention throughout the novel and I was really looking forward to reaching the end, to see how it all panned out. So yes, enjoyable but also forgettable, sadly!