The Wedding Gift by Kathleen McKenna



It is a spine-electrifying supernatural tale where a huge Southern States mansion contains one of the most terrifying, violent and indeed psychopathic ghosts to haunt any town. It is also a murder mystery - why did Robina Willets apparently kill all five of her young children, and her husband, before stabbing herself to death? And, if you are in the camp of believing that 'justice .... just is not', then this will have you frothing at the mouth with righteous social fury. Add to that the vision of two exceptionally beautiful girls lying on a landing stage in the middle of a secluded lake, sleeping naked in the sun .... .... and then see if you can find any consecutive ten minutes in this book when you don't at least snicker at the heroine Leeann's sly, caustic, sometimes-knowing sometimes 'too stupid to live' commentary

At first jumping into the story I was a little off-put by how self absorbed Leanne was. The reader gets an introduction to her as she is preparing for her wedding to a very wealthy and well known family. She is describing how many events she's been crowned queen of and how perfect her blond hair is and her blue eyes. You kind of want to slap her during the first couple of chapters. After a couple seconds of seeing if I could handle it for a whole book, that was easy. Yes. It's pretty funny and she is definitely a character you wouldn't mind seeing run in the wrong direction when a murderer comes after her.

The book was actually a pretty fast read. Had some great twists to it. Even though I really was expecting a dark ghost story. It leaned towards a fun, almost chicklit novel with a ghostly mansion, but no gore and little horror.

There was an underlying mystery to the story, but had much more overtones of a comedic chick lit novel that had me giggling more than covering my eyes from all the deaths. There is a young main character, who calls her fiance's mother "monster in law" there are weddings, pregnancies and to keep with the "horror" theme, ghosts and death.

Comments