Perhaps this book should have been called: (Don’t Expect) The Wedding at Moonglow Bay (Any Time Soon). 😉
Blurb: It wasn’t the wedding night she’d expected!
When Samantha said “I do” to Luca Ginelli, she knew she’d found a reliable soulmate—a strong, sexy man who’d stand beside her through thick and thin. And so she’d started her wedding day filled with joyful expectation, only to have her dreams shattered when the man she married years before shocking, unexpectedly, reappears, insisting she was still his wife!
Seven years before, Luca’s brother, Nick, had stubbornly set off in a sailing adventure, ignoring the pleas of his young bride and all common sense. He’d disappeared without a trace; everyone thought he was dead—but now he’s expecting to pick up where they’d left off. He’d once been Samantha’s “lightning strike,”—the person you know is the one from the moment you first see them.
But seven years is a long time and so much has changed. Now Samantha is faced with an impossible choice and no matter which decision she makes, it threatens to shred the very fabric of the one thing she holds most dear—family.
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Once upon a time Samantha and Nick had fallen in love at first sight in high school. Nick’s family believed in “lightning strikes,” the act of finding the love of your life in one dazzling moment. They married, had a baby, and then had a fight with Nick going off in a huff on a sailboat during a storm where he disappeared. Seven years later, Samantha and Luca, Nick’s older brother, say “I do.” Just as they’re about to consummate their marriage, a raggedy man with a long beard bursts in, but doesn’t say: “honey, I’m home.” But yes, it’s Nick. Now Samantha has decisions to make. She once loved Nick as much as breathing, but she’s with Luca now in a mutually satisfying relationship. Or is she?
I honestly love what Lori Wilde is trying to do in The Wedding at Moonglow Bay. She takes a character like Samantha who has gone through the foster program, who always seeks love and solid relationships, and swipes the rug out from under her. As an adult, Samantha–Sammie–has never been on her own. She’s never wanted to be. When Nick went missing, the Ginelli family embraced her as a daughter, not to mention that her foster parents were still in the picture as was her best friend and foster sister, Piper. Now she’s faced with a decision that would definitely have huge consequences ofr everyone, if she could make it, if she could see the forest for the trees.
While I love the epiphanies Sammie has, the advice she’s given, and what she learns, I wasn’t a fan of how it was constructed nor, sometimes, of Sammie herself. Some of it was predictable. Some of it too angsty. But little of it felt magical, a quality I always hope for in a Lori Wilde novel. In some ways, The Wedding at Moonglow Bay felt unfinished, like an early draft that still needed some ironing out with pacing and character issues, some polishing, some moments and ideas better thought out. I wished that Sammie’s exploration of self hadn’t been so rushed in order to seal a romance. Again, I do appreciate what Wilde was doing, I just wish it had been executed more smoothly.
I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
You need to channel all the wit you put into your reviews into a book! That said (again) I was surprised a Lori Wilde book disappointed. But what really surprises me is that it sounds like Sammie and Nick waited until marriage to have sex??? (Maybe that’s just my interpretation). Seriously, write that book.
Ha! Thanks, Maggie! I hope to get there. Yes, good observation. Sammie and Luca did wait until their wedding night because Nick had not been confirmed dead and that could only be after seven years. Hmmm. That makes it sound like it was a law and not personal choice…which it was.