A month or so ago I promised I would read a romance novel. Two weeks ago, the Barnes & Noble Friday free ebook was Christie Craig’s Weddings Can Be Murder. Rather than investigate in depth the recommendations of romances that men would enjoy, I went with easy and read this. This romantic suspense novel was actually passable, though still not good enough for me to recommend it. The mystery element of the story was surprisingly good, at least as far as the plot goes. Parts of the romance were pretty good too. Where Craig’s novel fell short was the characters. Each character is pretty much a standard role: the tough as nails ex-cop who has a heart of gold, the good girl, the supportive but slightly wild friend, the nice but no spark fiance, and the bad guy with vague but obsessive mental illness. Familiar, but none of them had much of a spark of real character in them. If this were a Coen Brothers movie, they could turn it into something awesome. But reading it was pretty pedestrian.
Katie Ray’s engagement to Joe Lyon will come to an end in two weeks with her wedding. Only 18 months after her entire family died in an accident, she’s a good girl looking for safety. But then while meeting with her to finalize ceremony details, her wedding planner is brutally murdered in the next room over. Katie Ray flees to a back room looking for an escape, but gets locked in by the evil-doer. Tabitha Jones, the planner, had suspected someone was killing her clients; her soon-to-be-hired-but-not-quite-soon-enough private investigator Carl Hades arrives on the scene just in time to get locked in the room with Katie Ray.
Meanwhile, Katie Ray’s best friend Leslie Grayson waits for her at a restaurant where Katie plans to introduce Leslie to her fiancé. But Katie’s nervous about the whole thing, so she doesn’t tell Joe or Leslie that they are about to become acquainted. Katie doesn’t show, being locked in a room with an Antonio Banderas look-alike in a prison-like mansion by a crazy killer, so the unknowing Leslie and Joe chit-chat and sparks fly. Well, not fly. But there’s a little glow.
Can you see where this is going? Despite this being only my fourth ever romance novel, and that’s if you count the two Twilight books, this setup was Obvious with a capital O.
There may be minor spoilers that follow.
The bad things out of the way first. The minor bad thing is that the prose in the first part of the book, where Katie and Carl are locked together, and Joe and Les join forces, does not flow. For everything that happens, the participants stop and reflect on how much desire they have and then consider how much of a bad idea following through would be and finally guilt themselves into a pretzel for even having thought non-Catholic priest approved thoughts. The navel gazing was tedious and broke up the flow way too much. A little too much introspection in later parts too, but it didn’t hamper the narrative later on.
The major bad thing though. Oh these characters! Straight out of central casting! In addition, despite being described as a capable take-no-prisoners type, Katie Ray displays no abilities whatsoever. She melts into Carl Hades protective arms. She faints even! The only times she pipes up, it’s because she wants to do the not sensible thing, like drag the protector with the gun into the bathroom with her instead of letting him put his police experience to good use. She’s not entirely annoying though. She’s good about using her words. All the characters are, so that’s a huge plus.
The crime fiction part was pretty decent. One of my bigger pet peeves in that genre is over-reliance on improbably coincidence. Craig doesn’t use that crutch. The killer doesn’t finish the job a half dozen times when he should, and the explanation for why seemed a little fakey. The killer is just a little too crazy to do things right. But if he had offed Katie Ray and Carl Hades in the early scene, we’d have a 75 page story with a very unsatisfactory ending. I just wish the character had been more fleshed out.
Of course, a romance needs a sex scene or two. I was this would consist of heaving bosoms and longing glances, and there’s a bit of that, but the porn payoff here is solid. It’s heavy on the foreplay. In other words, not too longing glances but also not too graphically focused on thrusting and sweating.
Overall, readable. Not high praise I know, but considering the other three romance books I’ve read I panned heavily, this is an improvement. Still gonna keep looking for something romantic that fits my sensibilities a bit more. I was not the target audience for this book.
A couple other blogged reviews:
Title: Weddings Can Be Murder
Author: Christie Craig
Imprint / publisher: Love Spell / Dorchester
Format: ebook
Length: 296 p.
Publication date: May 2008 (in paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-4285-0500-1
