The Bride Wore Size 12 by Meg Cabot
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
I admit I’m a little disappointed…but that could be my own fault: it turns out I started a series on #5 (oops) and mistook the author for Jennifer Weiner (my bad). But congrats to Cabot’s marketing team! I picked up the book because of the title and because I had seen posters around, so not a total loss.
So, like I said, I came into this series at exactly the wrong point. But it is charming and fun and a nice little mystery to nibble on.
Basically, for those who are as lost as I was, this book is about Heather Wells, a nice enough girl who is about to get married at the end of the month to her tasty PI boyfriend. She works as a residence hall administrator at a college, and she really just wants to get through to the wedding… but the dead girl messes that all up. So Heather takes time out of her busy schedule to solve a murder, too.
I admit it: I only picked up this book because it had the word “bride” in it and, as a very recently married person, I was hoping to enjoy some fictionalized wedding stress. I wanted to see if all the crazy chaos that went into wedding-planning made it into a book.
…it didn’t. In drips, maybe, but really everything in the title is completely disregarded. Rubbish title, in terms of relating to the story at all. I mean, sure, it is periodically mentioned that “OMG Heather is a BRIDE!” but, let me tell you, I had a lot more panic going on in the month before my wedding, and I was, as my groom put it, not a bride-zilla but bride-chilla.
And I have no idea where the size 12 nonsense came from, aside from once or twice mentioning that Heather enjoys a morning bagel (unnecessary fat-shaming, excellent).
So I hated the title and the book wasn’t at all what I expected, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t like it. It was fun.
I found it particularly interesting to see Cabot’s perspective on working in college administration, something I know about first-hand a bit. It’s not exactly a common career path, so I found that refreshing and interesting.
The murder and related sub-plot was a little transparent for my taste, but this is meant to be light reading, so I can’t fault it too much. Overall I thought it was charming, though I don’t think I care to step back into Heather’s world much more.
M.E. Kinkade 