Review: The Wedding Night

The Wedding Night by Harriet Walker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received an ARC of this book.
This book seems to think it is a suspenseful thriller, but it is not. At all. After finishing it, it really reminded me of one of those feel-good best friend movies. Which I'm sure seems very strange. And it was...
The story starts off when one of a group of friends tells everyone coming to her destination wedding next week that the event has been canceled. A small group of core friends decides to go ahead and head to France anyway to get away and recover/recharge. But someone seems to be very upset that there will be no wedding and decides to menace all of the guests. Who is doing it, and why?
The problem is that the guests aren't actually very threatened. The author does create an oppressive and ominous atmosphere, which is impressive when it is combined with the magnificent and lavish setting of the story. But the actual "threats" aren't that scary. Slightly creepy, maybe, but not enough to justify the edgy unease and fear the characters seem to be feeling.
Then SO much time is spent on the backstory of the characters and how they have ended up at the point in their lives where they feel unsatisfied, unaccomplished, inadequate, and unhappy. I found myself skimming these pages, because they just didn't fit in to what I thought the book was trying to do.
Once I got to the end of the book, I was underwhelmed. The person responsible for causing all the problems seemed to go out with a whimper rather than a bang, which is not what a reader wants for the conclusion of a thriller. And then everything was resolved in such a "perfect" manner that I felt like I had been reading a completely different book and didn't realize it until the end.
If you would like a book about three women who are able to find themselves and discover how to be happy with who they are, set in a fabulous sun-drenched location, then this book is for you. If you want a suspenseful thriller, then look elsewhere.

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