The Goodbye Bride Published by Thomas Nelson on March 8th, 2016
Pages: 336
Format: Paperback
Goodreads
Following a concussion, Lucy Lovett can’t remember the last seven months of her life. She doesn’t remember leaving her fiancé Zac Callahan weeks before their wedding or moving to Portland, Maine. And she sure doesn’t remember getting engaged to another man. All she remembers is loving Zac more than life itself.
It’s taken Zac months to move on after Lucy left him with no explanation. He’s thrown himself into his family’s farm and his restaurant business in Summer Harbor. Now Lucy’s back, vulnerable, homeless, and still in love with him. She needs his help putting the pieces together, but letting her back into his life is a risk—and the stakes are high. If he follows his heart he’ll win back the love of his life. But if her memory returns he’ll lose her all over again.
First I will say this: Until I started to write this review, I had no idea this was book 2 in a series. I guess what that officially means is that this is definitely what they call a “standalone” book in a series! I guess it makes sense though, that we would learn all the events leading up to Zac and Lucy’s scheduled wedding but the characters in this book really provided well developed characters without knowing what was in the first book.
Anyway, about The Goodbye Bride by Denise Hunter – as you can guess above, Lucy and Zac never make it to the altar in book 1 of this series. In this book, the last thing Lucy remembers is that she was going to marry Zac. Thanks to a bump on the head and a case of amnesia, she has lost the last seven months. She has no idea why she left Zac and who she was supposed to marry when she realizes she’s dressed in a wedding gown.
At first, I thought it would be a hard sell for me – the whole amnesia thing, but this author knows how to write, that’s for sure! Ms. Hunter provides readers with two main characters who are both very likable and it causes readers to be pulled right into the story. The story provides a mystery to readers – what happened to Lucy? Why did she leave Zac? Who was she supposed to be marrying the day she hit her head? How did her new life come to be? As each question is answered, it was more and more clear to me that I wouldn’t be able to put the book down until all my questions were answered.
I really loved Lucy and Zac, they had great chemistry and the added tension of their past and everything that was going on really added another fun level to their relationship. The multiple layers of the story make it unique in that there are several small side stories interwoven with the “big” story and the layers of those stories become clear to us as we learn more and more about those side characters as well.
I always love Christian fiction when it keeps the story believable. Nothing was preachy or sappy, and instead it felt like real people praying and having conversations about whether or not things in their lives were part of God’s plan for them.
Rumor in the bookstore is that the next installment of this series is Just a Kiss and it’s due out September 6, 2016! I know I’ll be reading it!
Denise Hunter is the internationally published bestselling author of more than 20 books, including Dancing with Fireflies and The Convenient Groom. She has won The Holt Medallion Award, The Reader’s Choice Award, The Foreword Book of the Year Award, and is a RITA finalist. Denise writes heartwarming, small-town love stories. Her readers enjoy the experience of falling in love vicariously through her characters and can expect a happily-ever-after sigh as they close the pages of her books.
In 1996, inspired by the death of her grandfather, Denise began her first book, writing while her children napped. Two years later it was published, and she’s been writing ever since. Her husband says he inspires all her romantic stories, but Denise insists a good imagination helps too! When Denise isn’t orchestrating love lives on the written page, she enjoys traveling with her family, drinking coffee, and playing drums. Denise makes her home in Indiana where she and her husband are raising three boys. Visit her website, denisehunterbooks.com.
I received a paperback copy of this book without cost from the publisher through The Fiction Guild, a Thomas Nelson/Zondervan book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.
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