The Christmas Wedding is a Christmas-themed romance co-authored by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo. The basic story is that fifty-year-old Gaby Summerhill is getting married at Christmas, but isn’t telling her family (or even any of the three men who proposed to her) who the groom will be until the wedding day. Since Peter Summerhill died three years ago, Gaby’s four children have drifted apart and she’s hoping that her Christmas wedding will draw them back together. Each of her four children, and their families, are facing their challenges, and these are sketched in as background to the wedding/Christmas preparations. There’s not much of a plot. Except for the unbelievably nasty alcoholic, pot-smoking, irresponsible Hank, all the characters are unrealistically Nice, even teenaged pot-smoking, part-time delinquent Gus. And, once again, the format is Patterson’s trademark ridiculously short chapters: 64 chapters which means there are 64 empty half pages at the beginning of each chapter and a total of 31 empty pages at the end of the chapters, all up, 63 pages of empty space out of 266 pages. Doubling the chapter length would result in a more realistic 235 pages. I can’t work out the purpose of this. Is it to make the reader think they have more of a story than they really do? To make it seem like the story is moving faster?(good in an action novel, but hardly necessary in a light romance). A very light read.
Reader Reviews
The Christmas Wedding is a Christmas-themed romance co-authored by James Patterson and Richard Dilallo. The basic story is that fifty-year-old Gaby Summerhill is getting married at Christmas, but isn’t telling her family (or even any of the three men who proposed to her) who the groom will be until the wedding day. Since Peter Summerhill died three years ago, Gaby’s four children have drifted apart and she’s hoping that her Christmas wedding will draw them back together. Each of her four children, and their families, are facing their challenges, and these are sketched in as background to the wedding/Christmas preparations. There’s not much of a plot. Except for the unbelievably nasty alcoholic, pot-smoking, irresponsible Hank, all the characters are unrealistically Nice, even teenaged pot-smoking, part-time delinquent Gus. And, once again, the format is Patterson’s trademark ridiculously short chapters: 64 chapters which means there are 64 empty half pages at the beginning of each chapter and a total of 31 empty pages at the end of the chapters, all up, 63 pages of empty space out of 266 pages. Doubling the chapter length would result in a more realistic 235 pages. I can’t work out the purpose of this. Is it to make the reader think they have more of a story than they really do? To make it seem like the story is moving faster?(good in an action novel, but hardly necessary in a light romance). A very light read.