Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand

Beautiful Day by Elin Hilderbrand
My rating: 1 of 5 stars



The Carmichaels and Grahams have gathered on Nantucket for a wedding. Plans are being made according to the wishes of the bride's late mother, who left behind The Notebook: specific instructions for every detail of her youngest daughter's future nuptials. Everything should be falling into place for the beautiful event - but in reality, things are far from perfect.

While the couple-to-be are quite happy, their loved ones find their own lives crumbling. In the days leading up to the wedding, love will be questioned, scandals will arise, and hearts will be broken . . .

In BEAUTIFUL DAY Elin Hilderbrand takes readers on a journey into the heart of marriage, what it means to be faithful, and how we choose to honour our commitments.

Well what can I say? I never like giving a bad review and generally can find something about a book that I liked sadly Beautiful Day is the exception - I can't think of a single nice thing to say about this book. It was so boring and depressing in parts that I didn't even finish reading it which for me is unheard of.

Most authors manage to create a work of fiction that transcends all cultures and nationalities so that anyone can identify with it no matter where they are in the world. Not so this author - it was SO American that it seemed to want to exclude all non Americans. References that made little or no sense (unless I am assuming you are American) which was so frustrating. I found the whole subject matter very miserable and morbid, reminding the reader constantly that the daughters' dying mothers' wishes for the perfect wedding for her daughter will be one occasion that she will not live to see. There were attempts at humour but frankly the whole thing left me feeling depressed. This was one of 4 novels I took on holiday with me to review and it was the last one I read; thank goodness otherwise I may never have got round to reading anything else on holiday!

I can't tell you how it ended as I didn't bother reading to the end, I could not even bring myself to skim read it either. I feel bad about writing such a stinging review but feel that there was nothing redeeming about the book at all. I'm afraid that it only merits a 1 from me - the wedding still hadn't taken place by page 285 out of an astonishing 401 pages - this could easily have been cut down. Laboriously slow paced, it was schmaltzy, overindulgent and depressing - sorry.

I would like to thank the publisher for sending this in exchange for an honest review.