He’s Cancelled
He’s Cancelled by Sophie Ranald. Bookouture
Natalie and Archie have been going out for a year now and then Archie proposes, launching the wedding preparation process. While Natalie is from a single-parent family with limited funds, Archie’s family is reasonably well-to-do and has offered to pay for the whole shebang. Archie’s sister gets involved along with his mum and the planning takes off in ways neither Natalie nor Archie could imagine. They really just wanted a simple and small wedding with a “do” at the local pub afterwards.
At the heart of the story is a couple with family taking over plans and leaving them with little control. I found it frustrating to see Natalie unable to stand up to the in-laws but I can understand how she might have reached that point. As for Archie’s behavior, I am far less forgiving and feel like he put so much more importance on his time when Natalie was just as busy as he was. Also, he just wouldn’t step in and speak to his family and just buried his head when things were getting progressively worse. Not exactly an equal partnership in the relationship.
That aside, my main issues with the book were that it wasn’t all that funny in the end and it did drag on quite a bit at times so that it seemed to take ages to finish this. I don’t think the plot device of the quiz questions worked all that well and there were really far too many of them. Then when the crisis point comes along, things start speeding along and lots of issues are tidied up a bit too neatly with characters suddenly behaving rather uncharacteristically.
I will say the introduction of the covid-19 situation towards the end of the book was certainly realistic and I think it was great the way we had a character working as a physiotherapist. And Nat’s mum seemed pretty realistic for someone in her situation.
Overall, this wasn’t quite as good as I’d have like so I will rate this 2.5 stars. Thank you to Netgalley and Bookouture for proving a free advanced reader copy. I am providing this review voluntarily.