Rating: 
Summary: Fresh, funny and heartfelt
Review: After a disastrous marriage when she was too young, family attorney Charlene Dugan has no plans to marry ever again. Now forty-five and seeing someone for five years, Charlene appreciates the status quo of having her own home and a significant other in that own home. With her nerves on edge from a couple going through a horrific divorce, her daughter stuns Charlene when she tells her that does not want to end up like her mom, all alone. On top of that flogging, her mom seems to be showing signs of mental instability and her former spouse Jake, who seems to be around a lot, accuses her of not being able to commit. To prove they are wrong she proposes to Dennis and he gladly accepts.
However, preparing for the wedding turns disastrous. Denis seems more interested with the wedding planner than Charlene. Stephanie seems into a deeper funk because her mom is marrying before she is. Then there is Jake, who makes it clear that he is he one who should be her groom not Dennis. Can a marriage take much more of a spiral downward than this mess that Charlene wants to escape from before she goes insane.
THE WEDDING PARTY is an amusing romantic romp that slowly develops the cast so that the audience understands everyone�s reactions and actions. Once the characters� motivations are established, the plot turns into a wild humorous ride down the aisle. Fans of contemporary craziness will want to attend Charlene�s wedding reception as the story line has several additional subplots augmenting a delightfully funny novel. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: amusing romantic romp
Review: After a disastrous marriage when she was too young, family attorney Charlene Dugan has no plans to marry ever again. Now forty-five and seeing someone for five years, Charlene appreciates the status quo of having her own home and a significant other in that own home. With her nerves on edge from a couple going through a horrific divorce, her daughter stuns Charlene when she tells her that does not want to end up like her mom, all alone. On top of that flogging, her mom seems to be showing signs of mental instability and her former spouse Jake, who seems to be around a lot, accuses her of not being able to commit. To prove they are wrong she proposes to Dennis and he gladly accepts.
However, preparing for the wedding turns disastrous. Denis seems more interested with the wedding planner than Charlene. Stephanie seems into a deeper funk because her mom is marrying before she is. Then there is Jake, who makes it clear that he is he one who should be her groom not Dennis. Can a marriage take much more of a spiral downward than this mess that Charlene wants to escape from before she goes insane.
THE WEDDING PARTY is an amusing romantic romp that slowly develops the cast so that the audience understands everyone's reactions and actions. Once the characters' motivations are established, the plot turns into a wild humorous ride down the aisle. Fans of contemporary craziness will want to attend Charlene's wedding reception as the story line has several additional subplots augmenting a delightfully funny novel. Harriet Klausner
Rating: 
Summary: Flaky Heroine and Jumbled Plot....
Review: I was so excited to read this book that I started reading it as soon as I got it and then began to frown a little, then more, then realized I was frowning so much because the heroine was not only irritating, but she was flaky and cold. I got about 100 pages in and was wondering when it was going to pick up finally and the again realized that the book was 377 pages. It should've been very involved at this point, but all I got was bored and confused.
Confused because the jumbled plot was filled with too many people all talking at once and information into their lives when they had nothing to do with the story, or, the 'wedding party'. What party? There was no funny and quirky wedding party with crazy characters that will make me laugh until I ache or touching moments where I sigh and shake my head. Too much insight into the main character Charlene's friend's life, Pam and Charlene's 25 year old daughter Samantha. Also more looks into the lives of a single mother's life whom Charlene is representing in court, a couple that is divorcing, her ex-husband, her elderly mother,her present boyfriend and future husband Dennis-with whom we're supposed to see in the wedding party as the groom, ha!, Dennis's dead wife, his sister...I can go on. My point is, is it too confusing. Too many plot developments that lead nowhere.
In short, this story was supposed to be about, and I stress the word 'supposed' because it came nowhere near it; a 45 year old woman who is sucessful at being a family lawyer and is happy with every part of her life, even with the long-term relationship she has with her boyfriend who is a doctor. The problem comes in when her daughter says she doesn't want to end up like her, single and alone and then her mother seems to be losing her mind when she gets lost in a grocery store parking lot and to top things off her ex still loves her and says she can't commit. To fix the problem she decides she wants to marry Dennis,(the doctor boyfriend). This is where we're supposed to have the wedding party, but we don't. The entire book is a mix of her life's setbacks and letdowns and how she hated her father and how he caused her to shrug off relationships. How her fiance is her 'rock' and her staunchest supporter, but he starts an affair with the wedding cordinater. She doesn't seem to care either way. Her spoiled daughter gets way too much time in the book and we were introduced to her boyfriend Grant too late.
All in all, we are faced with a flaky 45 year old heroine who is having some sort of mid-life crisis and it definately isn't funny, lol, a spoiled 25 year old daughter who is just as flaky, a quirky ex husband whom we never really understand, a cheating doctor fiance and an elderly mother who keeps upsetting Charlene. I am still waiting for the 'hysterical wedding fiasco' that I was promised on the jacket back... save your money on this one.... Tracy Talley~@
Rating:
Summary: Wild ensemble comedy
Review: If you enjoy ensemble comedy with a wide cast of characters, you will find a lot to appreciate in this riotous book. Charlene, the 45-year-old heroine, finds a host of obstacles in the way when she attempts a long-avoided walk down the aisle with her boyfriend of five years, including: her mom going off the deep end, her daughter angsting about growing old and ending up alone like her mom, her fiancé hanging out far too much with the wedding planner, and the her sexy ex husband stepping forward with the craziest behavior of all, a demand for another chance. Robyn Carr keeps a lot of balls in the air with this story, but all the colorful characters and their competing needs add excellently to the frenetic pace which is a main source of the book's humor. The various story lines leap and skitter, ultimately feeding into each other for a strong climax. In addition, the romance with Charlene's ex husband is sexy and adds a lot to the humor as well. I also really appreciated encountering a well-lived-in older heroine for a change.
Rating:
Summary: You have to like the heroine and I didn't
Review: My title is basically my review. I didn't like Charlene. There are strong women and then there are self absorbed whiny people, Charlene fits the latter. Why the author describes Dennis as being loyal and wonderful is beyond me. He didn't have the gumption to break off his "engagement" before he starts an affair with the wedding coordinator. Charlene needs some snappy dialog and some female friends to get her on the right track but then that would be a Jennifer Crusie novel.....the premise for this book showed promise it just wasn't well executed.
Rating:
Summary: Funny, light and interesting!
Review: The Wedding Party was a tremendously fun book to read! The story was light hearted and the characters were hard to resist! I found the dialogue fresh and easy to read. A BIG hit in my book! I will definitely seek out more titles by this author. Her writing is a breath of fresh air!
Rating:
Summary: Fresh, funny and heartfelt
Review: This is the perfect book for readers who like a little smart-alecky humor to leaven an awkward moment. Charlene is like you'd imagine Bridget Jones to be when she hits forty-something. She's got a heart of gold, a challenging and endearing set of friends and family, and the dilemma of a lifetime--where does her heart belong? Page Up and buy this immediately! It's terrific.
Rating:
Summary: five stars from someone who actually READ the book
Review: Unlike a couple of these negative reviewers, I actually read the book. From cover to cover. In two days. And Charlene's daughter is named Stephanie. And her boyfriend is a physician's assistant, not a doctor. But maybe I'm just used to reading nice, long books and keeping a variety of characters straight--Carr's special gift. Obviously not a gift shared by some of these reviewers...
This might be my favorite Robyn Carr book yet; it's certainly a bit lighter than some of the others (no domestic violence, for one thing). Charlene decides to get married, but to the wrong man. Charlene's mother is losing her mind, and her daughter is a spoiled brat. The men in this book are virtually all heroes; they just need to be matched up with the right women. Which, of course, takes 377 entertaining pages to work out. The only problem with Carr's books is that I keep finishing them!
Rating:
Summary: A Bit Too Much
Review: While I enjoyed Carr's wittiness, I felt that there was just too much going on in this book at once. The insight into each character's life was enjoyable at first, but after a while I began to wonder what the point was. The author begins to delve into Pam's life (Why, though... what, in the long run, does her romantic life bring to Charlene's wedding story?), only to leave her hanging for a while. Then the story read like a hasty game of catch up. This seemed the case also with Stephanie, Charlene's daughter, and her boyfriend, Grant. Grant was given no character at all until the point where he decides to leave Stephanie. Then we're bombarded with him. I would have to say also that, though Carr defines each character's relationship with the others, their interactions seem forced. Carr jumps back and forth between a myriad of characters yet they are never fully developed. Instead, she gives to them all a "everyone is happy now" ending that just doesn't ring true. In fact, much of this book rings false. Dennis is - continuously - described as a rock, steady, trustworthy, etc. But the second Charlene's back is turned he's after Agatha... and completely ignoring Charlene's hour of need. Additionally, the book is repetitive. We spend pages reading of Charlene's "traumatic" childhood in detail, only to have her daughter give a thoroughly parrot-like recap (of her mother's THOUGHTS) to her father later (and the long-lost-father story was too much - let's face it... after a certain period of time, people need to stop whining about their childhood woes and Charlene can't really use a ragabout father as an excuse for being even more self-absorbed than her daughter). We are also told Merrie's life story several times (yet another character with no substantial purpose in the book; her story is convoluted and becomes even more difficult to track - Carr doesn't seem to know where she wants to go with it and it flies completely out of bounds). I was very let down by this book; I had looked forward to reading it and to be honest I couldn't believe how much I disliked Charlene by the end of the book. She not only does NOT get over her controlling nature, nor does she curb it; she uses it on someone else. Truly I found her even more disgustingly self-absorbed than her daughter (why didn't Carr go into THAT aspect of things when discussing, quite unnecessarily, everyone's psyche?). In all, for such a short book (I read it in one sitting) there were just too many characters and subplots at once (the stalking by Fred is completely erroneous here, as is Dennis' sister, Merrie, the woman with the goose, etc. and each lends precisely nothing to the plot which, according to all reviews and the book jacket, is supposed to be about Charlene). For the author to have thrown so much into so few pages served only to dilute the point she was trying to make (kind of like condensing "Gone With the Wind") and considering that no wedding actually gets planned, calling the book "The Wedding Party" is misleading. Glad I only borrowed this one.
Rating:
Summary: Not a romantic comedy at all, but still ... quite good
Review: While this was a good book, I would definitely *not* categorize it as a romantic comedy. So if you are looking for something light and funny, there are plenty of (other) authors to try. I would categorize this book, rather, as an issue-based contemporary romance - sort of women's fiction, if you will.
I liked this book. I like Ms. Carr's writing style, it's light, easy to read, and she has the gift of making her characters seem real. But while the writing is light, the issues she explores are not. So this is a hard-to-categorize book - light reading because of the easy-to-read style, but heavy reading because of the many characters and heavy issues that they are dealing with.
I found that while I didn't particularly like the heroine, Charlene, I found myself liking her a lot more at the end, when she finally gets all the pieces of her life together and realizes where she went wrong in the way she was living her life, and looking back, says to herself - I know I made a lot of mistakes, but they were inevitable at the time - and I think that that's very, very realistic. Yes, that's real life - most of us haven't figured everything out at twenty (like some Regency heroines seem to do), but rather, we figure things out slowly, bumblingly, just like the heroine did.
I happened to have really liked Grant, her daughter Stephanie's boyfriend. I know that we don't get to know him too well, because we don't get to see him too much - but isn't that just the point, isn't that what Stephanie is upset about as well. But I do like the way he's sure of himself, knows where he's going and what he's planning on doing with his life, unlike Stephanie? And Grant is a hero through and through, even to the end - when he said good-bye, it was a classy good-bye (I'll pay your rent until you figure out what you want to do), I thought he was very mature, and I liked him. (By the way, don't you think it's funny the way they keep on insisting what a *wonderful* job they did raising their daughter when it's so obvious she's a little screwed up?)
I also really liked Jake - I sometimes felt like shaking Charlene at how she was treating him, isn't it great to have someone so in love with you that he stays around even after the divorce - and she treats him like dirt, and he still loves her...
I wouldn't give this book five stars, it wasn't great riveting reading, but on the other hand I did enjoy it, and I really liked the ending, I think it wrapped things up very well. I would even say that the ending bumped up this book from being a three-star pleasant read, to a four star, better than average read.
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