If you know going into this book that it is first and foremost NOT a romantic comedy, then I think you'll likely enjoy it. But I'm not a fan of a women's fiction book being passed off as a rom-com, which are two distinctly separate genres, and this one definitely falls into the former.

I decided to DNF at about 55% because I am not a fan of women's fiction. I'm sure this is a great read for people who are more on the fence or love the genre, but I'm firmly in the "do not request" camp as I know I never have a good experience reading them. Recategorize this one so that people are aware what they're requesting, or risk ending up with negative reviews on what is likely a lovely book.

I'm going to be honest, the beginning was a bit slow for me. I had friends tell me it picks up once Freya starts her wedding season and they were right. Once Freya began her wedding season challenges orchestrated by her best friends Ruby and Leo, to book really took flight.

Right from the beginning we find out Freya is dumped in the cupboard a la Harry Potter the day before her wedding by the man she's been with since college. She doesn't know what to do with herself, is this just a break and they'll get back together or is this permanent. Worst part was her wedding was the start of the wedding season and she had around eight weddings to now go to solo. Her friends Ruby and Leo (one of the weddings) hatch a plan with Freya whilst drinking that she must do random challenges at each wedding to help take her mind off the demise of her and to help her move on.

Some of these challenges were simple like be the last on the dance floor, but others took some real guts like streaking down the hotel hallway. Through the season Freya finds herself, experiences new things, creates new friendships, and reconnects with family. I loved the London/Dublin/France/England settings for all the different weddings. It was fun traveling with Freya on her journey towards self acceptance. In the end I think Freya learned more about herself and her capabilities. The fact that there was a bit of romance also made this book fun. I do hope we get a continuation of her story or maybe a story for her brother Adrian.

How fun is this concept?!

This was such a witty and charming read. It had a swoon worthy, slow burn romance but it was also so much more.

After being dumped just hours before your own wedding, as you can imagine, this one started off pretty deep and emotional but then turned into a beautiful and inspirational journey of self discovery as Freya learned how to be happy on her own after a 12 year relationship.

By the end, I was so invested and felt so connected to Freya that I was so excitedly cheering her on! I would love to see this one adapted!

This wasn't what I thought it would be. I thought it would be a light romcom and I would laugh and fall in love with a couple falling in love. Even though this book didn't start out this way, all those things still happened. Freya gets jilted before they make it to the wedding day and she spends the book trying to find out who is she when she's not part of a couple. Her journey is painful for her at times but sets up some amusing scenes and new potential relationships. I enjoyed getting to know her and watching her grow.

Whoa! What a ride. It was very fast-paced. The writing style kept me hooked and I didn't find myself losing any interest. I enjoyed getting to know each of the characters and how real the story felt. The author did a great job painting the setting, so it was easy for me to visualize the scene played out before me. I recommend giving this one a chance!

This book wasn’t for me. It wasn’t really a romance novel, it was more Women’s Fiction. The story had a lot of potential, but I personally found it quite boring. Freya was dumped the day before her wedding and had to survive attending a large list of her friends weddings. Her two best friends created a challenge list of things to complete at each wedding to keep her preoccupied and not focused on her ex.

The story contained a LOT of fluff - I found myself skimming through a lot of pages that just had irrelevant and uninteresting contributions to the story. There were few good sections (mostly her interactions with Jamie) - but those were only small sections of the book.

Spice = non existent in this book. There’s one brief make out scene but that’s it.

Thank you NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

this story was very fun and cute. I loved freya and being inside her mind for this story really made me feel for her. she was trying throughout the whole story to be strong and supportive of those around her after her wedding was called off. but I loved seeing the vulnerability and growth that situation gave her. even though I loved the romance in this story that we saw. I think the display of freya and her support system from her friends and family touched me even more.

Book: The Wedding Season
Author: Katy Birchall

“When you get dumped the day before your wedding in a broom cupboard, suddenly everything seems a bit sh*t.”

That, folks, is where we start with this one. As a search commences for lost peacocks, our heroine, Freya, is maddeningly dumped by her fiancé on the eve of her wedding. (Yes, you read that correctly. No, it wasn’t a typo. I did, in fact, say something about peacocks.)

Anyway, in the following days, Freya handles this development about as well as you’d think: “At one point, Dad was standing on the landing, and he actually had to step aside to let me crawl past him along the carpet to the loo.”

Unfortunately for Freya, it’s the wedding season, and she has seven weddings to attend in the coming months, some of which will force her to come face-to-face with her ex. In an effort to distract Freya from painful reminders of what she’s lost, her friends devise a plan: they will give her one task to complete at each wedding, and some of these tasks are doozies!

What follows is a delightful journey of one woman’s quest to define her life and claim her happy ending, while having a little bit of fun along the way. You’ll laugh. You’ll sigh. You’ll swoon. You’ll have the time of your reading life.

Give it a shot. You won’t be sorry.

This book was a fun treat! I loved it! It was a good reset after I read a heavier book. It kept me flipping pages well past my bedtime!!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I enjoyed reading The Wedding Season; I thought it was nice to see Freya progress from being in a long-term relationship to coming to terms that she can be happy after a breakup and live life for herself and do what she wants to do while also discovering more about herself. I thought the conversation with her mother towards the end of the book was really touching too! The only thing is that this was categorized as a romance book when it's really not one at all in my opinion. Yes, there IS a love interest and he and Freya have a great deal of interaction; however, he's not the main focus of the story so because of that, I felt like his character was one-dimensional and only there to further Freya's character development despite him showing up often throughout the second half of the book.

"Here's to Feet"

Wow. I absolutely adored this book! A wonderfully woven string of words that is perfect for fans of rom-coms and those of us who were burdened with heartbreak in the past.

The idea of a task for each wedding to get your mind off the heartbreak is TOTALLY what my friends and I would have done.

The meaningful chats at each wedding leading up to such a satisfying ending.

Freya is awkward and quirky and relatable. I loved her character and her arc.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this arc!

Thank you Katy Birchall and NetGalley for a copy of this ARC. All opinions are my own.

This book is the book I didn't know I needed in my life. It was so light and uplifting, I really enjoyed getting lost in Freya's world of weddings. After she's dumped in a closet the day before her wedding, her best friends have decided to give her tasks to get her through the wedding season. Some of them range from small little things, to crazy tasks that tear Freya out of her comfort zone.

My absolute favorite thing about this book was the growth that we get to see in Freya. She goes from a woman who doesn't think she'll ever move on and can't comprehend a world without Matthew, to a strong woman who finds her happiness again. I caught myself smiling throughout the book because I had such an airy feeling in my chest over how Freya began finding herself again.

I'm jealous of the wonderful relationship she has with not only Ruby and Leo, her best friends, but also her brother and father. There is a true support system in place that's filled with love, encouragement and laughs. The interactions and commentary between characters had me laughing out loud.

I look forward to more from Katy Birchall in the future and would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting an uplifting, funny read.

4 Intense But Worth it Stars
* * * * Spoiler Free
You say Weddings and I am all in. This particular book though had a very different take on them and it was original, for sure.

It was a mixture of heartache, coming to terms with it, and the undying support of the woman's posse. After being dumped one day before her own wedding, our gal has to be part of all the other weddings planned that year.

Each becomes a way for her to heal.

When Freya's fiance breaks up with her the day before their wedding, she's left heartbroken, gaslit, and feeling as if she's wasted her twenties. With no ideas on how she's going to survive the summer wedding season, she depends on her best friends to get her through. To distract her from her heartbreak at each wedding, they assign a task that she must complete before the night is over. As Freya embarks upon this wild endeavor, she finds love, happiness, and friendship in more places than she'd ever thought possible.

I think this book is brilliant, but I absolutely disagree with it being classified as a romance. The majority of the book is about Freya's self -growth and the lovely people who she meets along the way. I will say that by expecting this to be a romance, I was pleasantly surprised when certain romantic tropes got turned on their heads in an utterly different direction, but I ultimately felt confused for the most part about where the storyline was going if not to give Freya another love interest within the first half of the book.

Overall, I think anyone in their twenties and thirties would benefit from giving this a read. I certainly found value in it!

Many thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review!

I really wanted to love this book as much as I did Birchall's last, The Secret Bridesmaid, but sometimes a book just isn't for you. Following a woman through a summer of weddings, right after being dumped by her fiancé, The Wedding Season has a great concept and some truly funny scenarios but ultimately failed to engage me. While the heart of the story is her learning to let go and find a new happiness in herself, I found myself wishing for subplot where she was actually trying to achieve something, so I could get invested in concrete stakes beyond "survive talking/not talking to the ex." Not a bad book, by any means, but a little lacklustre any time the heroine's amazing friends, Ruby and Leo, aren't involved.

My thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's press for providing an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

I fell in love with the Secret Bridesmaid, and so while The Wedding Season was delightful and entertaining, it wasn’t my favorite. Freya is adorable and Jamie too but the side characters were just OK for me! Still blew through it in a weekend! It’s a great airplane read!

Katy Birchall's The Wedding Season is a thoroughly enjoyable romance novel. It's light-hearted nature and snappy dialogue make it the perfect novel to dig into this summer, especially if you invited to a wedding or two.

Freya has just had her heart broken unexpectedly when her fiancée, Matthew, calls of the wedding the night before the big shin dig. But mending a broken (and revengeful) heart is the least of her issues when Freya realizes she now has to navigate seven future weddings during her upcoming "wedding season". While celebrating the love of friends and family over many, many drinks and plates of chicken; Freya is making the best of a crummy situation. Now the real question is, is she ready to open her heart again to another chance at love?

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for a copy of this novel.

I think this may be my new favorite rom-com author! This is the second book I've ready by her and it was just as witty and charming as the other one. When I say witty, I mean I chuckled and laughed out loud so much my hubby asked if I was ok. It was so fresh and fun! I loved the character development and the friendships. This was everything you want in a rom-com and I loved every second of it. 4.5 stars

4/5 Stars
The Wedding Season by @katybirchallauthor

Thanks again to @netgalley and @macmillanusa for the advanced copy of this book! I loved the author’s last book and was so excited to see this on my shelf!

I went in thinking I wouldn’t like it as much as I liked the Secret Bridesmaid but it wasn’t long before I was giggling out loud.

I loved it - finished it in one day. It’s out now! Go get it!

In The Wedding Season, we see the book start with Freya getting dumped the day before her big day. But with seven more weddings that year, she's terrified to face them alone, so her friends devise a list of hilarious tasks for her to complete at each wedding and take her mind off her misfortune.

After reading and loving The Secret Bridesmaid last year, I could not have been more excited to read this one! Both novels are more women's fiction, with an undercurrent of romance thrown in, and center on weddings, but they are stand-alone novels and not part of a series. Despite that caveat, it is clear these books are written from the same voice, and the author's trademark humor comes through. Just as in her prior book, we have various humorous exchanges--this time in the form of group chats--and the end of nearly each chapter. And the humor, laugh-out-loud factor is really what elevates this book and puts it in the five-start category. Because everyone loves a good rom-com, particularly with a jilted bride, but make me laugh out loud? Priceless.

Thanks to St. Martin's Press for my eARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

5 stars - 9/10