Save the Date by Morgan Matson

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I love Morgan Matson, and this was one of my most anticipated books of the year!

Save the Date takes place during three crazy days in the life of Charlie Grant. Charlie is the youngest of 5 siblings, and the only one still left in the house. There is a lot of change afoot in Charlie's life: her mother's famous comic strip is coming to an end, Charlie is about to graduate high school, and her parents are selling their house. The book takes place during her older sister's wedding, who is getting married at their house. And for the first time in years, all her siblings are going to be home at the same time, and Charlie is determined to make sure everything goes perfectly. But the weekend becomes a complete disaster: there are feuding relatives, surprise guests, a missing suit, an unexpected dog, and a papergirl with a vendetta agains the family, among other things! While all of this is happening, Charlie's longtime crush Jesse is back in town, and the wedding planner's assistant is surprisingly cute. Throughout all of this, Charlie is coming to realize that her family isn't as perfect as she thought it was, and they might even have some secrets of their own, and that she is holding on to the past so tightly that it is affecting her future.

I really enjoyed Save the Date! I liked the wedding aspect of it, and I really appreciated that (for the most part) Charlie had a really good relationship with her siblings, especially her sister, the bride. It was really refreshing to see a bride who wasn't bridezilla! I also liked the comic aspect of the book; Charlie's mom is the author of a famous comic strip that is based on her family and it's really fun to see some of the strips, as they appear throughout the novel. Although I did really enjoy Save the Date, I was not my favorite Morgan Matson book; that honor goes to her previous book, The Unexpected Everything. The Unexpected Everything is one of my favorite books, and I was just expecting it to live up to its standards, and unfortunately it did not. I also felt the book kind of dragged at some points, and so it took me a while to read. Having said that, one of the things I love about Morgan Matson's books is that they are all standalones, but all of her books either take place in the same town (Stanwich) and/or have characters with some connection to the town, so the main characters from her previous book will make some sort of cameo in her newest book, if that makes any sense. I think it's so cool! So characters from The Unexpected Everything do make an appearance in Save the Date!

Although I didn't enjoy Save the Date as much as The Unexpected Everything, I still really liked it and I definitely recommend it!

Rating: 4/5 stars

XOXO,

Isabella

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