Title: The Wedding Dress
Bookit #3
Author: Rachel Hauck
Release Date: 2012
Medium: Paperback
My grade: A-
I really enjoyed this book, which is actually the first in the series. However, none of the books appear to be interconnected other than a few minor things. The third book, which I’m not reading at this time might have some more connections, however. Basically, you can read this book and The Wedding Chapel in any order and not be out-of-place.
The premise of this book is a bit like the sisterhood of the traveling pants – except it’s a wedding dress made in 1912 that has been worn by 4 different brides without needing any altering.
The main character is Charlotte Malone, a thirty-something wedding shop owner who specialises in dresses. She ends up buying an old truck at an auction that contains the dress. It inspires her to investigate the history of the dress, even though it keeps making her face her own hurt after her fiancée broke things off.
The book focuses mostly on Charlotte and Emily Canton, the dresses’ first owner. I wish there had been more POVs of the other women who wore the dress. However, it is an enthralling story. Each bride has her own story, and her own way of coming around to the dress. Each from a different time period with different problems and issues to deal with. Emily was in 1912, which dealt with Women’s rights and racial discrimination. Mary who married during the depression, and Hilary who married her husband just before he set off to fight in Vietnam. Charlotte has her own issues with a broken engagement both she and fiancee Tim stuggle with as well as finding out about her own father who she never knew.
It also made me think about what actually were the Jim Crow laws. In Emily’s story, she chooses a black woman as her seamstress and gets arrested under those laws for ‘inciting’ people. Even though racial problems in society still exist, it seems so strange to read about this kind of thing as a normal part of society.
I do recommend this book. The end is a bit cheesy, but I enjoyed the filter of history it brings.
Sokorra Lewis 