Books Read: Jenny Oliver - The Vintage Summer Wedding

A Vera Wang dress, the reception at a sophisticated London venue, and a guest list that reads like a society gossip column are all the ingredients of Anna Whitehall’s perfect wedding that never was…

Spending the summer uncovering hidden treasures in a vintage shop, Anna can still vividly remember both her childhood dreams; the first was that she’d become a Prima Ballerina, and dance on stage resplendent in a jewel-encrusted tutu. The second was that at her wedding she would walk down the aisle wearing a collective-gasp-from-the-congregation dress.

Years ago Anna pirouetted out of her cosy hometown village in a whirl of ambition…but when both of those fairy-tale dreams came crashing down around her ballet shoes, she and fiancée Seb find themselves back in Nettleton, their wedding and careers postponed indefinitely…

Don’t they say that you can never go home again? Sometimes they don’t get it right… This one summer is showing Anna that your dreams have to grow up with you. And sometimes what you think you wanted is just the opposite of what makes you happy…

Amazon links: Kindle

I initially downloaded a review copy of The Vintage Summer Wedding from NetGalley to include as part of my Carina UK feature week in July but for various reasons my plans for that week went awry so it was never reviewed.

First thing I have to say is that from the title of this book I had expected it to be a completely different story to what it was, one about researching ideas to make the perfect Vintage Summer Wedding but it's not that all.  In fact there's very little mention of weddings at all until near the end, it's more about the fact that Anna has had to return to the village of Nettleton that she was so keen to leave in the first place and how she adapts back into village life.

I'm afraid to say I struggled with the first half of the book as I couldn't relate to Anna at all and her attitude to being back really put a dampener on it but as the story progressed and she made more of an effort to fit in, especially with the kids dance group, then I did start to enjoy it a little more.  Personally I think Seb was a saint for putting up with her, I don't think I would have been so patient.

So if the moral of the story was about acceptance and making the most of what you have then Jenny has actually achieved this as in the end life was so much better for Anna than she could ever have imagined...