* Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher, Bookoture, for providing me with a copy in exchange for an honest review*

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I found this book on Netgalley. The cover is what drew my attention; simply looking at it is enough to grab any reader's attention. The cover itself is full of mystery, leaving you curious about the story. After that, I read the synopsis, which immediately grabbed my attention and led me to request the book. I’m delighted I got approved and got to read Mother Of The Bride . A lot was going on in this story, making it difficult to pick a stopping point.

I loved Lizzie, though I wasn’t too sure about her mental health. I understood why she was cautious about her mother, considering what happened the year before during her sister’s wedding. However, I felt that she was overly concerned about her mother’s capabilities. On the other hand, the way that her mother was acting while Lizzie was staying with her, was suspicious. As the story progressed, I began to suspect that Lizzie’s mother was involved in what occurred during Shelley’s wedding. I couldn’t get away from the story at this point.

I did feel that few parts would repeat, or drag on. However, those parts didn’t last too long. I loved the twists in this novel, and most of them surprised me, especially the last one. I enjoyed most of the characters, but Owen…I liked him, but I had a hunch that something wasn’t right about him. Mother Of The Bride is a novel you will not be able to put down once you begin reading it. Once the twists start, you’ll want to continue reading until the final page. I loved the amount of suspense in this book, which keeps you guessing until the last page.

I would highly suggest this to anyone who likes mystery and suspense. It will keep you at the edge of your seat.

Just brilliant! Loved this twisted rollercoaster of a story. Read it in one heart racing sitting. Just wow! Very highly recommend.

I was on the blog tour organised by Sarah Hardy

http://ramblingmads.uk/2024/03/26/blog-tour-mother-of-the-bride-samantha-hayes/

The description to Mother of the Bride gave me goosebumps and I could not wait to dive into the book. I was not disappointed. I was totally gripped from beginning to end and every twist had me doubting what I thought. I really loved Mother of the Bride and I highly recommend it.

Thank you to NetGalley and Bookouture for my ARC.

Lizzie & boyfriend Owen go to visit Lizzie's mother to tell her of their engagement. Lizzie has never got on with her mother & although she expects her mother to find fault with him she bowls him over with charm & he cannot understand why they can't get on. When their living arrangements leave them homeless, Lizzie's mother says they can stay with her. She also seems intent on arranging their wedding. It is the last thing Lizzie wants but for Owen, the whole village church is what he dreamt of! As time goes on Lizzie wonders exactly what her mother is up to.

I am a big fan of Samantha Hayes but I found this book disappointing. Lizzie drove me up the wall- secrets are never a good thing especially between people who plan to spend their lives together. If Lizzie felt she couldn't be straight with Owen it didn't bode well for the future! Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this book.

There is nothing I love more than a crazy family! This mother absolutely takes the cake.

Owns and Lizzie are going to be married. But they have to move in with her mother. Her mother is a bit of an issue. She is crazy. Will she allow this to happen? Or will Owen end up like her sister fiancée? Dead!

This fast paced thriller will have you guessing and shaking your head as you turn the pages to see what will happen next.

Thanks to NetGalley and bookouture for this arc

Gripping from the start with twists galore. I thought I had the story sussed buT boy was I wrong. Twists that I could never have expected. A brilliant book that I highly recommend.
Thanks to Netgalley for the chance to read this ARC

The name Samantha Hayes has become synonymous with great twisted psychological thrillers and this book is no different. However as much as I was expecting a few surprises I did not expect the ones in this story. Lizzie is so obsessed with blaming her her mother for everything she is blind to the actions of everyone else.. I thought.the end was a little too convenient although at the same time I was reeling from the shock that had just been revealed.. Another great psychological thriller from an author who can do no wrong, I loved it.
Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC of this book

Lizzie and her fiance Owen move in with her mother after her friend tells them they can no longer stay. Lizzie is hurt by this but hopes that they'll be able to rent somewhere when Owen's invoice is paid. They end up moving in with her overbearing mother who decides to take over the wedding planning much to Lizzie's dismay. She helped organise her sister's wedding and look what happened there...

Things go from bad to worse and Owen seems to like living in the house having cozy chats with her mum. It's very twisty with some shocking revelations throughout. The final twist I never saw coming! I really recommend it.

Thank you NetGalley and Bookouture for sending me a copy of this book to review. I found this book to be quite entertaining. The cast of characters were definitely a bunch of characters. Lizzie and her fiancé Owen move in with her mother after being asked to leave unexpectedly from a friend's home. Lizzie's mom is not June Cleaver; she is overbearing and controlling. The relationships in this story were well written. The characters all have their flaws and are shrouded in mystery. Lizzie's anxiety surrounding her wedding is also at an all-time high due to what happened at her sister Shelly's wedding a year ago when the groom never made it to the altar. This book had plenty of twists and turns to keep you on the edge of your seat.  
 
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

This was a fantastic book and kept me guessing the full time.

The characters were well thought out and I could feel myself in the main character Lizzie’s shoes.

The suspense waiting up to her wedding day was well planned and I was waiting on something happening at every page.

Would recommend.

I loved how fast paced this book was and I loved the twists even though the main one was pretty obvious.

Ah man the MC Lizzie drove me crazy. With everything that kept happening, she still stayed in her situation without trying to get out of it.

Thanks NetGalley and publisher for the digital copy in exchange for my honest review!

Each year, I hold out a hope that the Easter bank holiday weekend will be quiet, relaxing and allow me to switch off for a while and just read a good book. And it seems like each year - not including 2020, obviously - those hopes are set to be dashed. But never have they been dashed any more spectacularly than this year.

For starters, Mrs Book Nook's car, and then mine, each developed different and unrelated faults that needed fixing to avoid the risk of a breakdown at a time when all repair garages would be closed. This achieved, and £300 spent, the next thing to happen was that my builders announced - with a day's notice - that the stairs into my partially converted loft had to be fitted now. Not in 2 weeks' time, as scheduled, or even next week, but now. Now, d'you hear? The trouble is that the newly-fitted window still doesn't have glass in it which, coupled with a hole in the bedroom ceiling, means that going to bed is a bit like sleeping in a tent. Not ideal, especially when it. Won't. Stop. Raining. And you can hear every. Single. Drop.

In something approaching desperation, I made the 200-mile journey to my mum's house - in my thankfully mended car - in search of a few nights' sleep in a room with such luxuries as a glazed window and an intact roof. Thankfully, this was forthcoming, but there was a price to pay during the daytime. Reading so much as a page of a book, never mind writing about it, isn't easy when the house appears to be constantly full of grand-kids, all of whom were on a seemingly permanent sugar high from having indulged in chocolate.

Life, then, is one of my excuses for having missed my stop on the blog tour for Mother of the Bride. Sorry, Bookouture. The other is that even now, several days after having finished it, I'm still not actually sure what to say about it.

On the one hand, it's absolutely compelling. Addictive, even. Certainly during those nights of being unable to sleep well due to being exposed to the sound, if not the feel of wind and rain, it served as a welcome distraction. The prologue, whilst admittedly not original, is still a great hook and from there, we're effortlessly taken into the life of Lizzie as she prepares to marry her fiance Owen. It's a constant story of 'what? Why? Who? and it offers lots of mystery and intrigue. Why does Lizzie's mum, Sylvia, insist on controlling every last detail of the wedding with no regard at all as to what her daughter wants? Why does Owen appear to be not only willing, but wanting to let her? And could Sylvia really have been responsible for the death of Lizzie's sister's fiance, on his wedding day a year earlier?

I also really liked the portrayal of Lizzie's relationships with her sister Shelley and old friend Jared. Not only were these heartwarming, but they served to provide just the right amount of sanity in a world that, for poor Lizzie, seemed to be going so mad as to completely lose its marbles.

The trouble is that - and I can't think of an easy or gentle way of saying this - the book would have been better for me if it had made more sense.

The problem, I think, is essentially the same one that also affects The Split by Samantha Hayes' fellow Bookouture author, S E Lynes. The storyline is plot-driven, but it relies on the characters doing or saying improbable things in order to carry the plot along. However, the crucial difference is that in The Split, Susie Lynes makes a great effort to give the main characters sufficient back-stories to make their words and actions believable, even if they're not always relatable. But I'm sorry to say that Samantha hasn't managed to do the same thing here. For example, we're asked to believe that Sylvia has some unspecified mental illness which causes her to have very specific tendencies and reactions. I think I'd have liked to see some more research done here into specific conditions that she could actually have been suffering from.

Meanwhile, it's perhaps understandable that Lizzie is unwilling to trust her mum an inch. But at the same time, she appears to be trusting and naive enough to believe every word that everyone else ever tells her. And I'm afraid I really didn't get what was going on with Lizzie's dad, or even understand why he needed to feature in the story at all.

I'm not quite sure how I felt about the ending to the book, either. On the one hand, I could see where the main story was going from a mile off. But that said, there is a second twist which, whilst feeling somewhat improbable, still managed to be satisfying.

The best way I can think of to conclude my review is to say this. Mother of the Bride managed to take me into a fictional world that was even crazier than my real one. This was entertaining, but - and this is more of an issue with psychological fiction than most other genres - not entirely convincing.

My thanks to Bookouture for including me on the blog tour, and apologies once again that my review is late. Given it's critical nature, I will post on this blog and Netgalley only unless asked to share elsewhere.

I received this book from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

When I was reading the book, I was growing increasing frustrated with how meek Lizzie seem to be, and how crazy the mom was. I kept on waiting for the final shoe to drop, and was surprised for the grand reveal. I should have totally seen the twist but didn't.

Amazon no. 1 bestselling author, Samantha Hayes, has weaved an addictive psychological thriller, ending with some twists I didn’t see coming. I had an idea of one plot line, but in a book filled with characters that seemed dark, I didn’t expect just how it all turned out. This is a great one!

Thank you, Samantha Hayes, Bookouture, & netgalley for my copy! All opinions are my own.

3.75 stars

Dark, twisty, and intriguing are all terms I could use to describe this book. It was fun, quick, and interesting, and I found myself pulled in right from the beginning. Although I didn’t figure out exactly what was coming at the end, I did have some theories that proved to be reasonably accurate, and I enjoyed the guessing and sense of foreboding that were woven throughout the whole thing. This was a fun, easy read.

Lizzie Holmes had been tutoring students in Dubai. There, she met Owen and they clicked. Now, they are engaged to be married and - yes - she is also pregnant. She left her home in the UK to escape her mother who has always terrorized her. Her parents own a large home called Medvale House. Her father has been admitted to a mental facility after he suffered a near breakdown. Lizzie has a sister, Shelley, who is a vet. Sadly, her fiancé died just before their wedding.

Owen is waiting for payment for his work in Dubai and they both are in need of some place to stay until he gets his money. Against her better judgment, she agrees to stay with her mother. The woman insists on planning and paying for their wedding.

On it goes with a lot of repetition and supposed incidents of her mother showing her craziness. But, in the end, I figured every one of the characters was crazy in some way. I’ve read numerous books by this author and some are pretty good and some just don’t sit well. This one seems to be contrived in many ways and left me rolling my eyes. Sorry. Not a favorite.

Copy provided by NetGalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Mother of the bride
Thank you NetGallery for an advance copy. I love getting to enjoy the books before they hit the shelves.
I love wedding stories, good weddings, bad weddings, happy and sad weddings, disastrous weddings now I should be hooked! This book had potential to be a bit of all of that. Although I felt that characters to be under developed in the story. The author tried hard to introduce too many characters and situations that became irrelevant which in turn lost a bit of my interest.
I started reading the book and switched midway to audio and enjoyed it much better. So I definitely suggest that you try it on audiobook
The book did become pretty predictable for me. I was sure I knew who was who at the end and what everyone was capable of too! I don’t think I have ever figured out a thriller before it ended. An enjoyable thriller for a wedding junkie absolutely! Enjoy it!

esus, who needs enemies when you have a mother like Sylvia?

Yet again Hayes comes up with another five star read that was thrilling from beginning to end.

It's brilliantly twisty, fast paced with such an addictive plot and a cast of great characters, all of whom had me questioning their motives throughout.

Highly enjoyable, entertaining and definitely one to recommend.

I enjoyed this but my god lizzie was dumb! Surely she must have had reservations?? Loved the relationship between lizzie and shelley and Jared. Would love another to see what happens next