The Wedding Day (Catherine Alliott)***

Catherine Alliott is brilliant about writing comedies about rather stupid women and also brilliant at writing stories that really make you feel for the characters. But I’ve read three of her books now and all her characters seem fairly similar. The stupid heroine is in love with one man but then she meets another man who’s really horrible to her, then she starts having feelings for him instead. Actually, it’s the plot of pretty much any Mills & Boon although Alliott’s writing is a million times better than most Mills & Boon writers. So it is possible to read a number of books with exactly the same plot without getting fed up with it. But with this book, I found myself wishing for a bit of variation.

It’s not as though Alliott can’t do character. In this book especially, she has some great secondary characters. Annie, the central character, and her fiancé David might lack originality but David has a wonderfully mad and vague but terrifying and formidable aunt called Gertrude. Annie’s older sister Claire is always busy, bossy and competitive, just the sort of person I’d usually find really annoying but Alliott gives her a surprising vulnerability. The publisher who is interested in Annie’s book doesn’t appear in person but he’s a great character too. Then there are various friends and neighbours who are fascinating and amusing and Alliott takes the story off on endless twists and turns. And even when you know just where the story is going, she often throws in a surprise.

I also liked Annie’s ex-husband Adam. He does have a bit of a maturity problem (not to mention a fidelity problem) and you can’t blame Annie at all for leaving him - you actually kind of wonder why she didn’t do it sooner. But I did kind of feel he had some good qualities and I really wanted him to learn from his mistakes and end up happy, although maybe not with Annie. He was the first character in the book I really cared for and wanted to know more about. Some of the other major characters at that point seemed like lost causes and Adam didn’t… although I think Annie would argue with that.

Other characters however don’t quite work. Annie’s daughter Flora is a strange mixture of a stroppy teenager, a very young child and an adult. In some ways, this is completely realistic as everyone has different sides to their personality and there are times when you feel young and times when you feel old (not that I’ve ever felt old). But the different parts of Flora don’t quite form a coherent whole.

Annie, David, and Matt (Annie’s Other Man) don’t quite work for me either. The problem is that Annie is a bit unhinged. There’s nothing wrong with being a bit unhinged but I found it slightly worrying that she was getting married. She hardly seems to know David, she has little or no interest in the wedding (although she has somehow managed to convince herself she can’t wait) and seems to have no idea what she’s getting into. I felt as though I was older than her (she’s in her thirties so she’s much older than me) and that freaked me out a bit. I’m not used to going around feeling older than people. It always worries me to find someone, even in a book, who is considered a capable and responsible adult (unlike me) yet is obviously in need of someone to take care of them, be it temporarily or permanently. I really wanted to find Annie, look after her a bit and sort her head out. (Annie is probably now feeling very glad she doesn’t exist.)

This book also includes something I really hate to find in books. No, I don’t mean vomit although there is some and it wasn’t very nice but it could have been worse. What I also really hate is when one (or more) of the characters in the book is a writer and you have to read their work. Alliott makes us read some of Annie’s book. It is so cringe-makingly awful, it should probably be quite funny but the fact a publisher is interested in the book kind of spoils the effect. And there’s definitely a bit too much of it. But it is very cleverly done and there is a reason why Alliott makes you read it so I suppose she gets away with it.

David seemed like a perfectly lovely man but I didn’t really know what he was doing hanging around with this madwoman, let alone planning to marry her. He’s a doctor so I thought he must be setting himself up as her carer or something. Alliott does address this so she gets away with that too but it’s a good thing the book isn’t any longer. Towards the end of the book, you understand why Alliott has done certain things that just don’t make sense at first but until I found out why, I found these parts of the book very annoying.

As for Matt, he seems a little bit creepy. I can’t blame him for sneaking into Annie’s holiday home in the middle of the night, he did honestly think it was his holiday home. But shouting at Annie, getting her name wrong on purpose in insulting ways and trying to force her and her teenage daughter to leave the house immediately and go to an expensive hotel seems a bit much. Annie forgives him (she’s way too nice, she lets people walk all over her) but I still haven’t.

Alliott writes so well though, it was impossible not to become emotionally involved in the story, even though it took me a while and I might have given up on it if a) I didn’t have a blog or b) I didn’t know from experience that Alliott is such an emotionally involving writer. I wasn’t happy at all with the ending, it actually seemed completely wrong, if not dangerous and I really think Annie is in serious trouble. But if you ignore the last couple of chapters, the book would have a really exciting and interesting ending. The way Annie gets to know the characters in ways she hasn’t been able to before, the way she finds out about and comes face to face with their innermost secrets, the way she really does seem to learn from the experience and grow up a bit, made this book a (mostly) really moving and satisfying read.