Thirteen Weddings by Paige Toon

"Sometimes you have to step out of the light to see clearly again…

Bronte never expected to see Alex again after their one night together, but she never stopped thinking of him. So when she arrives at work one day to find that Alex is a new colleague, she’s secretly thrilled. The only problem is that Alex is now engaged to the girl he was on a break from the night they met.

Determined to move on, Bronte becomes a part-time wedding photographer, alongside her day job. Surrounded by loving couples, tearful bridesmaids, mischievous pageboys and interfering mothers-in-law, she struggles through wedding after wedding whilst her heart is slowly torn apart.

As Alex’s own wedding day draws ever nearer, their chemistry becomes harder to ignore. Bronte must decide whether to fight for the man she loves, or to let him go forever."

I sit here having just read this book in one sitting of around five solid hours and wonder what I can say about this book that fans of Paige Toon will not already know.  It has been a while since I have picked up a Paige Toon book, but I have missed her writing and have been looking forward to this book reaching the top of my TBR pile.  Her books are divine, and always have been.  After just a few pages of Thirteen Weddings, I remember why she is one of the best chick lit authors ever.  

Thirteen Weddings starts with a first chapter which draws you in and leaves you wishing you could meet a man like Alex in an eighties club whilst on a hen do you don't really want to be at.  You are immediately left on a bit of a cliff hanger as the book then jumps a year and a half forward (and part of me longs for it to have continued without a break).  What follows is a complicated web which soon becomes a love triangle when Bronte meets Lachie at a wedding.  The relationships and interactions contained in this book are likely to leave you as confused as Bronte.  

I loved the wedding photography aspect.  The descriptions of various weddings were captivating and this was a career I had not read about before.  It was interesting to read (never boring or repetitive) and I liked the variety of characters that it brought to the page.

I also loved getting to re-visit Lily and Ben from Pictures of Lily, a book which I adored and still have fond memories of (I cannot believe it has been three and a half years since I read it and you can read my review here).  I think there are other 'friends from the past' contained within (but I must own up and say I have not read every Paige Toon book going - something which I must rectify this year!)

I have to be honest and say that I do not know how I feel about the ending.  I felt more love for one of the guys in this book than the other, and I kind of wish things had turned out differently, but I can entirely see why things turned out how they did.  Girls - are you on Team Alex or Team Lachie?