Review of Save the Date

It’s June – what could be better than a cute rom-com about a wedding? Well, I’m here to tell you that Save the Date is more com than rom. Once I readjusted my expectations, did I fall in love? Find out below in my review of Save the Date!

Save the Date by Morgan Matson

Published on June 5, 2018 by Simon & Schuster

Synopsis adapted from Goodreads: Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before their house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again.

Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. 

The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge. There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo. 

Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly…cute.

Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

Thanks to Karen from FWIW Reviews for the ARC!

Review of Save the Date

The synopsis above of Save the Date is really quite accurate. And very comprehensive. In fact, it describes exactly what happens. So I’m not sure why I went into this expecting a swoony romance.

The first chapter is a scene of Charlie at a party almost sleeping with her brother’s best friend Jesse. Then the story skips ahead to the weekend of Charlie’s sister’s wedding.

At this point the book becomes basically a screwball comedy.

Weddings are rife with opportunities for disaster. They involve families and emotions. Lots of logistics. And typically … alcohol. After my own wedding, if anyone asked me advice about planning a wedding, I’d always say: just be prepared that something will go wrong and in spite of that, your wedding will still be wonderful.

In the wedding in Save the Date, pretty much everything goes wrong. Some of it was funny (I liked the surly paper carrier.) Some of it wore thin to me (like the security system alarm). Some of it was just sad (like the dog “on loan” from the animal shelter.)

I think my favorite thing about the book was how realistically it portrayed a big family event.

This was not an Instagram-worthy family or gathering. In the story, the Grant family fought and squabbled. They were both loving and horrible to each other.

There was tension – one thing the synopsis does not mention is that Charlie’s mother is a cartoonist who used her family’s lives to write her popular comic strips.  And her now-grown children are not always happy about the fact that their private lives have been splashed across the comic pages every week for years.

While the synopsis above says that the girl Charlie’s older brother brings home is awful, I didn’t agree. I really sympathized with the outsiders in this one: the borrowed dog, the “awful” girlfriend, and the hapless back-up wedding planner who tries to salvage the whole mess. And who is also a love interest in the story.  (I wouldn’t call this a love triangle, exactly, because the romance quotient was low.)

Overall, this wasn’t the rom-com I expected, but what I did like about Save the Date was that it was anti-perfection. It pointed out that families aren’t perfect and relationships aren’t perfect and weddings aren’t perfect. And that things that are imperfect are still wonderful and worthy.

So .. tell me in comments: if you’ve had a wedding or a big event, what went wrong? 

It rained on my wedding day (now I’ll never be able to get that song out of my head.) And we had the worst photographer ever. She was hired by someone who wasn’t me, and I can still barely look at my photos. The ones of the ceremony are blurry because she was too afraid to get close enough. And it was still a great day!