Ohhhh it was such a joy to enter back into Flora Mackenzie's world & see what all of the old friends have gotten up to!!!!!!!!!!! I so hope Jenny Colgan continues this Mure series!!!!!

I was SO excited to read this book. I’ve enjoyed many of this authors books in the past. Unfortunately I did not finish this. I think I’ve just outgrown books in which the conflict could be easily resolved if people had direct and open communication. I’m not sure when this happened for me but I now can’t tolerate any media where this is a plot device.

I love Jenny Colgan's books. They are what I would consider quality women's fiction. This one was a little slow getting started, I thought but then I stayed up far too late at the end, so... If you haven't read the series, I would definitely recommend going back and starting at the beginning. Beyond that, what can I say? Look up Jenny Colgan's books. Read them. Enjoy!

I decided against reading this. I requested it but didn't realize it was a book in the middle of a series. I haven't read the other books and *may* in the future but have no immediate plans to. Sorry for my mistake in the request.

This was a cute, quick and easy read. I haven't read the others in the Mure series, and I do think that would have helped to understand some of the backstory and other side issues where I felt a little lost. I think this is not as much of a stand-alone as I had hoped, but it wasn't a complete loss! I still enjoyed the meat of the story. I chose this because I'll ready anything set in Scotland!! I loved the setting and the fun characters and community. If you've read the other books in this series, I'm sure you'll love this. 3.5 stars because I would have liked a little more ease of reading it without relying so much on previous books.

The 5th installment in Jenny Colgan’s wonderful Mure series brings us back to this beautiful, remote Scottish island. It’s like a reunion with old friends, as we see what our beloved characters are up to now, and for at least some, get to witness the happy event they’ve been building toward over the four previous books. I'm not sure how well this book would work for someone new to the series, but for those who've read all the books leading up to An Island Wedding, it's an absolute treat!

Another wonderful visit to the island of Mure! I always love visiting the "top of the world" and all of the fabulous characters that live there. There is rarely a dull moment on this island and in the 5th installment of this series this trend continues. Though this is the 5th book in the series you could easily read this as a stand alone book but I highly recommend getting to know the islanders through the first 4 books before picking up this one. You will not be disappointed.
Flora is looking forward to marrying Joel and the whole island is excited to attend their wedding. But Joel is hoping for a small wedding and cannot understand why Flora wants all the people of the island sharing their special day. Will they find a way to come to a compromise or will it jeopardize their whole relationship?
This is a book full of heartwarming and heartbreaking moments. It is easy to get lost in the people's lives of Mure which makes it hard to put this book down. Little Agot provides some tense and yet hysterical moments and may be my favorite character.
I am grateful to Netgalley and Avon and Harper Voyager publishing for providing me with a copy of this wonderful book in exchange for a honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and publisher for this ARC publication for an honest review.

An Island Wedding
by Jenny Colgan
Pub Date: 21 Jun 2022

I requested this book but then discovered it was book 5, which may have affected my enjoyment of it. I had a hard time connecting with the main couple getting married (and a lot of the others). I'm not sure of all the backstory, but Joel just turned me the wrong way. Honestly, I was most invested in Sif and Lorena's story. I would definitely read a follow up book with them featured!! I really think this was a well written book but recommend reading the other books first (unlike me!) to garner a connection to the story and characters.

2.5-/3 stars

I am always a sucker for the Mure stories by Colgan. I really have enjoyed the journeys of the characters and have grown to look forward to reading more about them. We have some Colgan lovers here, so I will definitely be purchasing copies for the library.

I have been a lover of Jenny Colgan's books for a while now but her series set on Mure have been a favorite! I loved following the characters on the island as life happens, births, marriages and more. Felt like coming home!

It is wonderful when I can make another visit to the imaginary island of Mure, off the coast of Scotland in the far northern Atlantic Ocean and visit with all my friends there. In this newest book, Flora is hoping to marry her fiancé Joel, who wants a "sweetheart wedding," which is a very small and private event. Flora wants the entire island's population to be able to share their happiness at a big wedding at the hotel she manages. That is just one of the many conflicts that may or may not be resolved by the end of the story. The island of Mure is a character of its own and is described beautifully by the author. Thanks to NetGalley, Avon, and Harper Voyager for providing an ARC.

Very sweet, delightful story set on the Scottish Isle of Mure. Loved the location and the storylines of weddings. Great characters too.

An Island Wedding is the fifth book in Jenny Colgan's Mure series and takes readers back to this small island for a humorous, heartwarming story that is not without complications, emotional depth, more than a few surprises, and an ending that I really hope will be explored further in a future book.

Colgan brought the island of Mure to life through her vivid descriptions. I could easily picture it in my mind. It would definitely be on my list of places to visit. She then populated the island with intriguing characters, complex relationships, a warm sense of community, and more than one romantic entanglement. I liked that her characters were so fully developed, multi-layered, and realistic. While some of their situations made me laugh, others grappled with real-world issues that made my heart ache. Colgan does an excellent job of balancing humor and light with sacrifice and heartbreak while exploring relationships in their many forms.

I enjoyed the story and by the end I had begun to develop an emotional investment in the characters but was still left feeling a bit like the newcomer who doesn't quite know why everyone is the way they are; what they've been through to reach this point in their lives. We're told some of it but I'm a reader who needs to experience it. If you're the same, I strongly encourage you to begin with book one of the series and read the remaining books in order. After scoping out the earlier series titles, I discovered that many of these characters - and their relationships - have been evolving throughout the series. I need to go back to the beginning and travel that journey with them. I plan to read An Island Wedding again after having read the first four books. I have a feeling that my emotional investment in Mure and her citizens will be much deeper after having done that.

4.5 Stars
ARC received for fair and unbiased review

I want to travel to Jenny Colgan's fictional Scottish island of Mure. As always, her island series are really engaging reads. This is number five, but can be read as a stand-alone.

Flora is finally planning her wedding to Joel. Baby Douglas is nine months old, Flora continues to run the best hotel for many miles around. Flora wants a small, intimate wedding. The residents of the island all expect to take part in the wedding.

Olivia Mathieson, former resident of Mure, could not wait to get away. She is a gorgeous model and an active Instagram poster, and she has decided to have her wedding at the hotel - and it is the same weekend as Flora's wedding date. Olivia's wedding planner, the hard-boiled Jacinth, is determined to make Olivia's wedding the most over-the-top wedding ever. Complicated by the fact that Mure is an island is no deterrent to Jacinth and her plans.

We become re-acquainted with Lorna, the school teacher, and her secret love interest, Saif the GP, a Syrian refugee and his two sons. Saif has a lot of decisions to make and not all of them involve staying on Mure.

I’m a fan of Jenny Colgan’s series set on the Scottish island of Mure. The characters are quirky and totally believable, and every book feels like a getaway to a different world.

Flora and her fiancé are getting married. Finally. There’s another wedding planned, that of a former island girl named Olivia turned beautiful influencer. She and her wedding planner arrive and turn Mure, and Flora’s wedding plans, upside down. Can Flora satisfy her hotel customer’s wishes while still having the wedding of her dreams?

There are funny moments, sad moments and everything in between. This is a lovely book that will take you away. 4 stars.

Synopsis:
New York Times bestselling author Jenny Colgan brings us a delightful summer novel that will sweep you away to the remote Scottish island of Mure, where two very different weddings are about to take place...

On the little Scottish island of Mure--halfway between Scotland and Norway--Flora MacKenzie and her fiancé Joel are planning the smallest of "sweetheart weddings," a high summer celebration surrounded only by those very dearest to them.

Not everyone on the island is happy about being excluded, though. The temperature rises even further when beautiful Olivia MacDonald--who left Mure ten years ago for bigger and brighter things--returns with a wedding planner in tow. Her fiancé has oodles of family money, and Olivia is determined to throw the biggest, most extravagant, most Instagrammable wedding possible. And she wants to do it at Flora's hotel, the same weekend as Flora's carefully planned micro-wedding.

As the summer solstice approaches, can Flora handle everyone else's Happy Every Afters--and still get her own?

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed as in this review are completely my own.

2.5 Stars This is the fifth book in the Mure series and the first of the series that I have read. I was so lost reading it. The author did give a brief introduction to the characters before starting the story, but clearly this was a continuation of a series following the same set of characters rather than a book part of a series but meant to be its own story. I found myself frustrated by the characters and their action, partly because I thought their choices were not smarty and partly because I had no context to know if this was typical for them or out of the ordinary. Things like, Flora and Joel having communication problems, had me thinking that maybe they really shouldn’t get married, and the constant bickering between the sisters was just grating. Yes, it’s on me for not reading the previous books, but there was no indication in the blurb that reading the previous books was required.

Thank you to NetGalley and Avon Books for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I always enjoy books by Jenny Colgan. I haven’t read others in the series that take place in Mure, but it wasn’t a problem as I was able to read An Island Wedding just fine. I totally enjoyed the characters. There are three romantic relationships going on with two potential weddings. Flora and Joel are planning their upcoming wedding but both have totally different ideas of what they want. Olivia is returning home for her wedding to Anthony but his family is not happy with his choice. Lastly, Lorna and Saif are having a secret romance and some serious decisions to be made.
It’s a great story! Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

On the tiny island of Mure, Flora and her fiancé Joel are trying to plan their wedding. He wants a small, intimate affair and she wants a lush affair with all the trimmings but doesn’t want to disappoint him. The islands most famous former resident, Olivia returns to have her wedding at the hotel that Flora runs, and both weddings fall on the same weekend. The whole story focuses on the wedding planning and whether to have a joint wedding and whether Joel and Flora want to be in the background of Olivia and her splashy affair. There’s also a storyline of Lorna, who is Flora’s best friend, and her relationship with the local GP, Saif, who deals with refugee status and the war in Syria and what is best for his two sons.
The common thread behind this story is miscommunication! Ugh! Some parts were almost a struggle because they would have avoided so much trouble and hassle had they just spoke their mind! But as someone who very much struggles with this, I can totally relate.
While there lots of fun with the ins and outs of wedding planning, the dramatic story is so beautifully done that it kind of steals the show. And the last 30ish pages made the book stand out for me.
Thanks to Avon Books and NetGalley for this eArc in exchange for my review.

Flora and Joel are finally getting married in Jenny Colgan’s An Island Wedding, but, of course, events cannot proceed smoothly. First Joel suggests that they have a small wedding with just the people they love (and who love them). Flora agrees, but then things start getting out of hand because people she’s known all of her life expect to be invited, some even invite themselves, which makes Flora realize that she really wants all of her friends at her wedding, that she wants a traditional Scottish party of a wedding. Contributing to the upheaval is the arrival of Olivia, the island’s most beautiful daughter who wants to have her wedding on the island at the same time Flora is having hers. Madness and mayhem, both, erupt.

Owing to the fact that An Island Wedding is the fifth book in the series, there is quite a substantial list of characters, some who’ve popped up since the first and only book I’d read in the series up until this one. So, no, this is not a standalone and I certainly wouldn’t suggest reading this one without reading the others first.

While An Island Wedding sometimes verges on the fun fantastical as Olivia’s wedding planner Jacinth creates a hen party to end all hen parties (bachelorette party for you Americans…or is that us Americans? shrug), the novel also weaves in magic with Flora communicating with whales as well as the bittersweet relationship between teacher Lorna and refugee doctor Saif, which almost had me sobbing, and you know that doesn’t happen often. There is a little something here for everyone.

Sometimes Colgan’s writing can be a bit talky and take some getting used to if you’ve never read her before and there were words my Kindle just couldn’t provide a definition for but I take that as local color and mean to Google later but will probably forget.

All in all an entertaining and satisfying read about a magical island and its inhabitants. Now I just need to find the books I’ve missed so I can fill in the blanks.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This book has two main story lines. Flora and Joel are about to tie the knot, but they have extremely opposing views on what kind of wedding to have. Lorna and Saif are falling ever more hopelessly in love when Saif is forced to chose between remaining in Scotland or reuniting his children with their mother--in Syria, at the moment a place of no return. Meanwhile, island curmudgeon Jan is even more unhappy when her nemesis--her beautiful, near-celebrity sister Olivia--returns to the island for a ridiculously over-the-top wedding to a rich man. There are many good story lines in this book but it drifted a little from Colgan's strong, compelling writing in that the main problem for Flora was being hesitant to open her mouth and be honest with her fiancé. The story of Lorna and Saif is left hanging. Still, the island community is enjoyable, as always. I also liked the way Colgan gives Flora selkie intuition, and how that played out toward the end. This book is a mix from one of my top favorite authors ever..