Save the Date by Morgan Matson

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Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.

The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.

There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.

There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo.

Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly…cute.

Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

3.5 crowns

This book…was a bit of a messy experience for me? Which I mean, fits so well, since the Grants were a little messy and poor Linnie’s wedding weekend was a total mess (however, in the best rom com kind of way). This book had me teetering between Full On Annoyance and OMG This Is Great. But I seriously couldn’t stop reading it either way????

I think one of my biggest issues with the characters. I had a lot of beef with Charlie for about 5/8 of the book? Like, she was so selfish and focused on just here. Yes, there is a big change around and some redemption arcs, but it took a while to get there. She was the girl that I needed to root for, but I honestly just wanted things to go wrong in the book because that was the entertaining part. I couldn’t deal with a lot of her stuff – especially with how she treated Brooke. I get this wasn’t part of the program and she wanted to hang with your brother, but it wasn’t any excuse to treat poor Brooke (who legit was my favorite character of the novel so I don’t know how to deal with this).

Lol, but legit Brooke and Waffles were my favorite characters which is sad since Waffles is a dog and Brooke was the poor girlfriend of one of the brothers that got left behind. Also Bill. I liked Bill. And maybe even Will! OH, Rodney and his parents was cool beans, too.

I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the Grant family. Like, I thought they had some interesting dynamics, but I didn’t really see quite the draw? Yes, it’s totally a messy and realistic family, but I never really connected with the family unit. It felt like they were a clique that I wasn’t a part of and didn’t understand. I thought they were better at the end – the GMA interview really redeemed a lot for me – but I had some issues with them as a whole.

This was probably the biggest issue that I had with the book. I felt like the characters just made me really annoyed and I had to set down the book a few times to decompress from them. However, there were a lot of good points as well.

I really liked the comedy aspects of the book. I think it made me laugh out loud twice? Which is BIG for a book since I never laugh out loud for anything. And there were some witty twists and turns (some I predicted, some I did not), and I thought that it honestly was like a fantastic romantic comedy that I was watching play out. I did really enjoy a lot of the hijinks and I think the middle third of the book was all I needed from this book to make me feeling good. The end did leave me with a pleasant contemporary afterglow.

Jasmine might veer her carpet away from this wedding for a few days.

Also, I think the pacing was really good. It did seem to go on a little long, but I think overall it was pretty well done. I liked how everything came together, and dramatic moments happened when they needed to be. Matson is definitely a talented contemporary writer.

Overall, this wasn’t quite the summer contemporary adorable cheesy goodness that I was looking for, but it still had some good moments. I think the latter part of the book really brought it up for me since I had a lot of issues in the front half of the book. There were some good characters, but a lot of the main ones rubbed me the wrong way. It might be nice for a light read, but there could be some annoyance involved…unless it was exceedingly high expectations again. If so, OOPS. 3.5 crowns and a Jasmine rating!

What do you think? Has your last hotly anticipated read fallen flat or not? Can some characters ruin a book for you? How did you feel about this one and who were your favorites? Let’s discuss in the comments below!