3 STAR REVIEW

Thank you so much to Lake Union Publishing and Little Bird Publicity for providing me with a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I honestly had a really hard time getting into this novel.  A lot of characters were thrown at me in the beginning and I had a hard time keeping straight who was who.  I felt no connection to this book and honestly would have DNFed it if I wasn’t honestly a little curious about the outcome.

Annie Taft’s wedding is soon approaching and it’s speculated to be the wedding of the year if not the wedding of the century.  Her Aunt Faye is happy for her but can’t help think about Annie moving away after the wedding.  Annie is like a daughter to her as she took her in when she was 3-years-old after her mother was murdered and Annie helped convict the killer.  Now all these years later the killer is claiming innocence and Annie now isn’t so sure he was guilty.  Then Annie goes missing days before her wedding, right after the man who killed her mother is released.  

To me it seemed like the book wasn’t really about searching for the missing bride, it was more about all these different characters living in a small town and all of their individual problems.  Like I said above I had a hard time keeping up with the characters when every other chapter switches between their POVs.  I thought this book was supposed to be about the suspense surrounding finding the missing bride but really it’s about everyones story while they’re searching for Annie.  I wound’t have minded that if the characters had been more interesting and compelling but all of them fell short and were honestly a little annoying to me.  

Having never read anything by the author and after reading this book, I honestly don’t think I really want to explore her other novels.

Purchase Links:

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/only-ever-her-marybeth-mayhew-whalen/1129690967?ean=9781503903890

About the author:

Marybeth Mayhew Whalen is the author of When We Were Worthy, The Things We Wish Were True and five previous novels. She speaks to women’s groups around the US. She is the co-founder of the popular women’s fiction site, She Reads www.shereads.org. Marybeth and her husband Curt have been married for 26 years and are the parents of six children. The family lives in North Carolina. Marybeth spends most of her time in the grocery store but occasionally escapes long enough to scribble some words. She is always at work on her next novel. You can find her at www.marybethwhalen.com.