Retro Friday (21) - The Wedding Planner's Daughter by Coleen Murtagh Paratore

Retro Friday is a weekly meme hosted at Angieville and focuses on reviewing books from the past. This can be an old favorite, an under-the-radar book you think deserves more attention, something woefully out of print, etc. Everyone is welcome to join in at any time! 

For this week I chose The Wedding's Planner Daughter by Coleen Murtagh Paratore. I'm a huge fan of the Willa books, as I call them, and I've reviewed them before but this week I was feeling nostalgic and I just felt like reading it again.

The Deal:

Twelve year old Willa Havisham loves Bramble, Cape Cod. It's the only place where she has ever felt home, and she has lived all over the Eastern Seaboard. Her mother, Stella, is a successful wedding planner, but she has sworn out of love and plans for Willa to be a successful, practical girl rather than a romantic like her father was. 

But Willa loves books, she loves cherry cordials and she wants, more than anything, to have a father of her own. Which means she needs to find Stella a husband. Good thing that her Grandma is on board with that plan and ready to help whenever possible. Also a good thing? that Stella and Willa live next door to Sam Gracemore, Willa's English Teacher. A widower himself, Sam knows about sadness but he remains a cheerful man, he's handsome and loves books and he might have a smile capable of melting Stella's icy heart. 

So, for once, Willa has everything she always wanted: A best friend, her Grandma is around and her crush, Joseph, might like her back! So, she hopes that, on her 13th birthday, she'll finally get what she always wishes for: a new dad.

But, for that to happens, Willa needs to move fast, before her mother gets that "statue" look that means they are moving again.

My Thoughts: 

The Wedding Planner's Daughter is one of those books I simply love reading just for the fun of it. It has some dashes of romance and it has a lot of love for books. I adore Willa, even if she sometimes is 'too perfect' a kid, but I love that she loves candy and loves books like I do. 

The story is fairly simple, and you can read it pretty fast  - it's not a long book, so it only takes you a couple of hours to get through it; but it is full of sweetness. 

It does has it's cutesy things that, after a few re-reads, might start jumping at you; but I still love Willa. And I still keep up with her story.

Favorite Quote: "My favorite novels and books of poetry are here on my nightstand for whenever I need them. Certain lines make me happy. Certain characters are like friends. All these years, moving from town to town, it's been hard to make real friends." - Willa

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