Life's a Beach - Portia MacIntosh

[goodreads]

Title: Life's a Beach
Author: Portia MacIntosh
Genre: Chick-lit
Rating: 3/5
# pages: Audiobook ~8hrs
Date read: January, 2022

Peach is excited to hear that her sister, Di, is getting married. Of course, she would have preferred her little sister to be engaged to someone she's known longer than a week - and the fact that his name is Charles doesn't bode well - but who is she to judge?! After all, her own love life is non-existent, and who doesn't love a destination wedding...?

Whisked away to the gorgeous Italian coast, Peach assumes her role as chief bridesmaid and, despite her reservations about the groom, she tries to ensure everything goes to plan.

But weddings are never straightforward affairs... throw in some unexpected guests in the form of ex-boyfriends and one night stands, and soon enough there is more drama than a reality tv show.


I was fairly well entertained by this, but it had some pretty significant issues, which subtracted two stars.

First of all, I absolutely hate it when the main conflict could have been - if not avoided, then at least diminished significantly by two people just communicating with each other. I fully get why the conflict arose, but good grief! Two words a bit earlier on in the book would have solved everything.

And the worst thing was that Peach didn't learn anything from it! Conflict #1 was exaggerated because of no communication, then by all means, let's not communicate when conflict #2 rolls around either!

Gah. That plus the extremely moralizing tone suddenly assumed in the last chapter made me roll my eyes and bring the rating down a notch.

But apart from those things, I did actually really enjoy the book. It wasn't nearly as good as "Honeymoon for One" (which I'd still recommend unreservedly), but took place on the same Italian island, which is never a bad setting for a book. Also, with a few exceptions I liked all the characters, and loved seeing the growth in some of them! And that what I had assumed was supposed to be the main plotline/conflict ended up being only a minor detail in the end.