About the Book
Max is a washed-up rock star who’s about to turn forty and feeling nostalgic for his university days. All he says he wants for his birthday is to host his old friends at his house in the French countryside for a weekend of good food and reminiscing. But he has an ulterior motive: Finally ready to settle down, this is his chance to declare his undying love to his best friend, Helen.
Max’s private chef, Juliette, has just returned to her hometown after a nasty breakup and her parents’ failing health move her to sell her dream restaurant in Paris. Still reeling, Juliette throws herself into her job, hoping that the peace and quiet it offers will be the perfect cure for her broken heart.
But when Max’s friends arrive, the introverted, dreamy Juliette finds herself drawn out of her orderly kitchen and into their tumultuous relationships. A weekend thinking about the past spurs more than one emotional crisis, as the friends take stock of whether they’ve lived up to their ideals. Together for the first time in years, it’s not long before love triangles, abandoned dreams, and long-held resentments bubble over, culminating in a wedding none of them ever expected.
My Review
When I started reading A French Wedding I felt a pull for this book. The writing started off very eloquent and detailed, causing me to picture the scenery in the book easily. The friendships I was interested in, but it sure did seem from the get go that each friend was hiding something from the others. As the chapters went on, my interest did start to wane, unfortunately. The writing that I found to be so lovely in the beginning of the book seemed to get a bit overdone. It was almost like each paragraph had lengthy descriptions about anything and everything, and made my reading pace slow way down. I appreciate the author wanted to bring us vivid scenes, but it just became too saturated with unnecessary wording that wasn’t moving the story forward. Toward the halfway mark, I found myself starting to speed read to get through it quicker, and it still took me several days to finish the book, instead of my regular two. Unfortunately, this one was a miss for me.
2 stars
