Sunday, June 17, 2012

Always the Designer, Never the Bride by Sandra D. Bricker

3 Star

It’s taken Audrey Regan years to establish herself as a wedding dress designer, and to date she’s been roped into creating dresses for nine of her girlfriends. Request #10 follows her vow to “Just say no!” and comes from her very best friend. She can hardly turn Carly down!         

Audrey arrives in Atlanta early to perform all of her maid-of-honor duties along with final fittings for a one-of-a-kind dress. But Carly’s wedding is nothing short of an event, complete with Prince Charming, and the festivities make Audrey question whether there’s a prince of her own anywhere in her future.  


Enter the groom’s brother and best man. Shaggy-haired, tattooed bad boy J.R. Hunt couldn’t be any more different from Prince Charming if he rode in on a Harley Davidson.  Oh, wait. He actually did ride in on a Harley!



Kathryn - 3 Star

There was nothing really new about the storyline to Always the Designer Never the Bride, but I did like the bridal gown business background as I haven’t run into it before- it was interesting to me from an educational stand point!  I probably would have liked even more information about the process and time it actually takes to make a bridal gown and it would have given more character depth to Audrey perhaps.

There a lot of other characters which I found a bit confusing at first and it took me some time to get them all straight - I’m not sure if they were really all integral to the plot. I did enjoy Audrey’s assistant Kat as she was the most life-like of the characters, more so even than Audrey at times, she was bubbly and charming and had a secondary interest in jewellery design which made her interesting in her own right.

A bit peculiar to me was Audrey’s childhood friend Carly. While she was sweet, I never felt any attachment to her directly except as the reason they were in Atlanta in the first place. I think much more could have been made of their friendship and it was strange to me that as her best friend Audrey would be staying in a hotel rather than with Carly given what happened after the wedding.

I found this novel cute, not sure if that’s exactly what an author or potential reader wants to hear but to me it means that there’s a decent story line, the characters are warm and engaging and that you feel satisfied with the end result.  I’m curious now to read one of Bricker’s earlier novels of the same series.

Thank you to Abingdon Press for our review copy!

Connect with Sandra D. Bricker here:

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