Carl Hades is a retired cop turned private investigator. He gets a call one Sunday morning from a woman named Tabitha who claims someone has been killing her brides. She's a wedding planner whose brides have been mysteriously vanishing right before their wedding days. She wants to hire Carl to find out who's behind it all and sets up a meeting for later that afternoon.
Katie is supposed to be one of Tabitha's brides, but she can't stop throwing up at the thought of getting married. While she's not sure if the urge to purge comes at the thought of marrying Joe or the thought of getting married in general, she knows that the constant vomiting isn't a good sign. Either way, Katie is convinced that it's
all just wedding jitters and insists on moving forward with the wedding plans. Even thought it's Sunday morning, she makes an appointment to meet with her wedding planner, Tabitha, to finalize some details
- except before they're able to get any work done, Tabitha is murdered on the front steps and Katie finds herself being chased throughout Tabitha's house by her killer. Luckily, Carl arrives in time to scare off the killer before he's able to get to Katie as well. Unluckily, however, both Katie and Carl end up locked in a storage closet with a madman on the outside.
I wanted to like this book more than I ultimately did. I found Craig's debut, Divorced, Desperate and Delicious, to be funny, sensual, and a true page-turner. Unfortunately, all of these elements
are missing in Weddings Can Be Murder. There
are vaguely humorous scenes, but nothing that really causes outright laughter. I also didn't really believe in the chemistry between Katie and Carl. I know that Katie was attracted to Carl because he looked like Antonio Banderas, but according to her, so does every other male in his family, so much so that she can't even tell Carl and his brother apart. Likewise, I found it entirely too easy to put this book down and walk away from it. While it wasn't a chore to read it, I didn't find myself drawn to pick it up and continue the story. Part of that was because I found the villain to be crazy – I didn't understand his motivation, and I generally have trouble with villains who have a similar motivation.
Overall, I think I would have enjoyed Weddings Can Be Murder better if it had been Craig's first book. I think it would have been easier to overlook the books flaws had it been her debut. However, following Divorced, which set such a high bar in my mind, I just found this to be lacking.