Happy Ever After ... or Happy For Now?
Ellie Martin meets handsome Gray Whitby in a church garden, where he’s attending a guerrilla wedding and she’s hiding in the bushes. They immediately hit it off, but the relationship hits some bumps when it’s time to meet Ellie’s family: her mother hasn’t trusted men since her city-boy husband left her with two small girls to raise alone.
While A May Bride was well-written, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I’ve enjoyed some of the other novellas in the A Year of Weddings series. Although Ellie’s mother was over-the-top in her irrational dislike of city boys, I think she had a valid point in worrying about Ellie getting involved with a man she’d only just met.
And at the risk of adding a spoiler, there were a couple of things that I’m not convinced about regarding the relationship. (Let’s be realistic, I’m not exactly adding a spoiler. The title of the novella is A May Bride. The clue is in the title).
Ellie makes several decisions that affect both of them without asking Gray first—that’s not a recipe for good communication in marriage. Mom’s bad behaviour drives Ellie to do exactly the thing Mom’s advising against, which I think shows a lack of judgement on Ellie’s part. And Ellie and Gray attend different churches because neither feels comfortable with the church the other attends, which doesn’t seem to be a strong foundation for a Christian marriage.
Overall, I think A May Bride might be a Happy For Now story, not a Happy Ever After. And that’s not the message I want to see in a Christian romance novel.
Thanks to Zondervan and NetGalley for providing a free ebook for review. You can find out more about Meg Moseley at her website.
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