I Do - Over, Confessions of a Recalcitrant Bridesmaid - Michele Riccio

Genre:  Contemporary Romance

Published: January 1, 2013

Length:  327 pages

ISBN: 1481922602

Amazon  

3 Columns – Worthy Read

Blurb

Grace Douglas has a secret crush on Jon, the boy next door. The problem is: at thirty-six she's well past the age of secret crushes, her father insists Jon is her brother (by dint of his marriage to Jon's mother), and Jon is nothing more than brotherly when he spends the night in her hotel room.

Then a meddling fortuneteller convinces Grace's half-sister, Kitty she needs to re-stage her recent wedding – and get it right this time – or suffer the consequences. Dodging the bullets of a mysterious, if incompetent, stalker and fending off Geraldo, co-worker without a work ethic are a piece of wedding cake for Grace – compared to being Kitty's maid of honor.

Grace has to find a way out. Or be seen by the man she loves – wearing a bridesmaid gown.

Review

My lady Danu, forced by the inclement spring weather to retreat from the beach and its parade of eye-candy discovered the free books on Amazon.  I Do Over, Confessions of a Recalcitrant Bridesmaid by Michele Riccio was one such book.  I, her humble scribe, provide the following at her behest.

I Do Over is a fast, and in places, a frenetic read; a pace driven in large part by Grace’s snarky perspective.  First person point of view, while intimate, often seems, to my lady, more like navel-gazing than a means to a deeper immersion in a story world when applied to contemporary romance sans subgenre such as paranormal or suspense.  In this case, it became somewhat more problematic because one is left wondering if Grace prefers the merry-go-round she’s on.  To wit...

Grace suffers from the ills of close – as in living next door for example – proximity to her immediate and extended family in ways worthy of a sitcom.  But sitcoms are somewhat akin to cotton candy and whipped cream; fluffy and light and almost never filling.

Dysfunctional is a descriptor that sums up her familial interactions without doing them justice.  They are emotionally manipulative, self-serving and exhibit a mastery of selective hearing that is truly awe inspiring. And Grace experiences it all, accompanied by a silent, jaded and, at bottom, painful commentary while engaging in a kind of self-immolation on the altar of family obligation as she dances to the tune her step-mother whistles.  In fact, it’s like the song in one’s head one can never get rid of.  The snark becomes the means of continuing the pattern of unhelpful surrender –a pattern she carries into her work relationships as well.  One hears in the subtext her own awareness that that self-immolation is the price she pays for admission to the family or job even as she struggles to find the exit.

The snark Grace uses to keep her cool and avoid offending her family or to keep her job is, at times, laugh out loud funny.  One cheers for her at the same time one is mentally screaming at her to do a Nancy Reagan and just say NO!  Trouble is, by the end of the book, one is left feeling much less sympathetic towards Grace than when one started.  In fact, one is left wondering if the author’s naming of the heroine ‘Grace’ was deliberate or serendipitous. 

In romance the character arc of the hero/heroine is the plot. Without getting into spoilers the end point of Grace’s arc is less than fully satisfying.  A much more defined arc would have added the cake to the buttercream.

In spite of all that, I Do Over is a fast, fun read, good for the beach or the long wait at the doctor’s office.  The author’s eye for the nitty-gritty of family is both lucid and, surprisingly, affectionately amused.  It’s that detail that, in the end, makes this book work, and reaffirms The Goddess Danu’s determination to avoid long exposure to the company of her own extended family unless there are copious amounts of free booze and chocolate available.