Official Synopsis:

Charlie Grant’s older sister is getting married this weekend at their family home, and Charlie can’t wait—for the first time in years, all four of her older siblings will be under one roof. Charlie is desperate for one last perfect weekend, before the house is sold and everything changes. The house will be filled with jokes and games and laughs again. Making decisions about things like what college to attend and reuniting with longstanding crush Jesse Foster—all that can wait. She wants to focus on making the weekend perfect.

The only problem? The weekend is shaping up to be an absolute disaster.

There’s the unexpected dog with a penchant for howling, house alarm that won’t stop going off, and a papergirl with a grudge.

There are the relatives who aren’t speaking, the (awful) girl her favorite brother brought home unannounced, and a missing tuxedo.

Not to mention the neighbor who seems to be bent on sabotage and a storm that is bent on drenching everything. The justice of the peace is missing. The band will only play covers. The guests are all crazy. And the wedding planner’s nephew is unexpectedly, distractingly…cute.

Over the course of three ridiculously chaotic days, Charlie will learn more than she ever expected about the family she thought she knew by heart. And she’ll realize that sometimes, trying to keep everything like it was in the past means missing out on the future.

Rating: 5/5 Stars

Review:

Morgan Matson has created an entertaining, humorous, and exquisite novel that will leave readers begging for more Charlie. (That’s me. I’m the reader. Sequel book pronto please.) Charlie was a great main character, and I loved hearing the story from her point of view. She seems like a character I would love to be friends with.

The number of mishaps that happen at the wedding feel a bit over the top and unrealistic if thought of to actually be happening, but all of the situations went over pretty smoothly in the novel. (Then again, I’ve never really seen the inner workings of a wedding, so maybe situations like the ones portrayed in the book are pretty routine.)

I loved the dynamic between Charlie and the wedding coordinator’s assistant, Bill. (Side note: I think this is the first book with a main character who goes by Bill.) It was a lot better than her dynamic with her crush and one of her brother’s best friends, Jesse. Although I will say that I shipped Jesse and Charlie for a while, I definitely sided more with Bill.  Not that it was a competition, but you know what I mean.

This was a huge cast of characters. A guide to who everyone is is included at the start of the book, which was really helpful because I had to refer back to it a few times to get the characters straight at first. However, I think that Morgan made it all work pretty effortlessly.

I loved the idea of including a comic strip that Charlie’s mom wrote based on their family. It’s a totally original idea that worked really well. Their family was so big and dynamic, but Charlie still managed to have pretty good storylines with each of her siblings, especially because the majority of the book takes place on Friday, and really just within a few days.

Andie and Clark from Morgan’s previous book The Unexpected Everything make a brief appearance!  I read that one in September 2016, and I didn’t even realize that it was them until a random moment long after that scene. Oops. That being said, that’s one of my favorite things ever. I LOVE when characters from previous books are mentioned, just to solidify that they all take place in the same universe. Other characters from Morgan’s other books might have been mentioned, but TUE is the only one I have read so far.

Overall, this was a really awesome read, and I strongly recommend it. I breezed through it in two days, and it’s a pretty decent length, being about 417 pages.