👰‍♀🌊 The Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath 🌊🤵
Genre: Psychological Thriller
Length: 400 pages
POV: 3 characters
Pub Date 🇦🇺: Jan. 23, 2025, 🇺🇸: May 6, 2025
My Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Thank you to NetGalley and Aria & Aries / Head of Zeus media for the e-ARC of this book. The opinions stated here are solely my own.

Synopsis:
Three families come together in an Australian coastal town to celebrate the wedding of Adele and Jason, who have known each other since childhood. Invitees include a grieving mother, a bride with second thoughts and secrets, a best man who wants nothing more than to stop the wedding, the zany grandmother of the groom who may or may not be showing some signs of dementia, and more close family/friends with skeletons in their closets. Absent is Ollie, the bride's ex/groom's childhood friend, who drowned off the jetty many years ago when they were all teenagers. Why is this past traumatic event still on everyone's mind, and will the attendees' secrets threaten to ruin the wedding? What could possibly go wrong...

Opinion:
I definitely enjoyed this fast-paced thriller set in a gorgeous Australian coastal setting! Every single character seemed guilty of something from the time they entered the story and it constantly left me wondering how these 3 families were all tied together through Ollie's death. I love how the author gave each character many facets to their motives and personality and it made me want to keep reading until the very end, which was also a bit of a twist for sure!

Told in multiple POVs, this psychological thriller centres around Adele and Jason and their impending nuptials on a remote Australian beach.

I struggled with this one. I felt there were too many things going on and trying to be threaded into the story all at once, some of which went nowhere.
I kept on until the end and although some parts were great, the majority had me wondering why I didn't add this to my DNF pile.

Thanks to the author, publisher and NetGalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Lies. Mysteries. Deadly Consequences - sounds like your standard wedding, right? Utterly entertaining and addictive.

The Wedding Party is a psychological thriller, told from multiple POVs, that centers around the wedding of Adele and Jason on a remote Australian beach. Adele and Jason had known each other as teenagers when Adele had been dating Jason's best friend. When tragedy strikes and Adele's boyfriend dies in a horrible accident, she doesn't know how she'll move on. When she reunites with Jason almost a decade later, she believes it is fate. But when family and friends come together to celebrate, long buried secrets are revealed, and more than one person is out for revenge.

To be honest, The Wedding Party was not for me. I found the pacing to be slow, the characters to be underdeveloped and horrible, and the plot to have too many holes. From the start, the story was all over the place, which led to many of the storylines having no conclusions. There were also storylines that were just unnecessary and plain confusing as to why they were included in the book. The characters are extremely unlikable with no redeeming qualities. Overall, this book was just messy.

I love the cover of this thriller and it certainly drew my eye when choosing my next read.

Adele and Jason are on a countdown to their wedding day. They have known each other since childhood when Jason was the best friend to Ollie, Adele’s first love who we learn died in tragic circumstances. The book is told by Adele and also the mother of Ollie, who years later is struggling still with the death of her son and how it happened. There is quite a good plot although I felt eager towards the middle to get to the ending and was not disappointed with the final twists by the author. I didn’t really like any of the characters or warm to them.

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity along with the author and publisher to read this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Head of Zeus and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

Welp. This was BAD bad. To the point where I’m not sure why I actually finished this book. The story was all over the place. So many plot threads went nowhere. The writing was clichéd. None of the characters really had any personality. I didn’t understand what was going on in any of the POVs. And the ending was so dumb.

This was a big old miss for me. Again, I don’t know why I didn’t DNF, except that I was hopped up on some cold medicine and maybe I went into some kind of fugue state *shrug*

Anyway, if this review somehow makes you want to read this one, the Wedding Party will be out 1/23.

A decade after a tragic accident affects their families, Adele and Jason bring everyone together to celebrate their marriage. But not everything is as happy as it seems as many family members have secrets of their own. Suspenseful with lots of twists.

#TheWeddingParty #NetGalley
A fun read.
Adele and Jason are childhood sweethearts. Their wedding day on the sunny Australian coast is a chance to reunite and celebrate with friends and family. But Adele isn’t telling the truth about her relationship. And some of the bridal party – still reeling from a tragic death in the group a decade before – hold secrets of their own. What happened on the jetty all those years ago was an accident, everyone agrees. Or do they?
If you ignore the ending then this is a good read.
Thanks to NetGalley and Aria & Aries for giving me an advance copy.

Rebecca Heath’s “The Wedding Party” was the first book I read from the author. Everyone has gathered for the upcoming nuptials of Adele and Jason. They grew up together, but reconnected as adults. Other characters that are part of the story include Jason’s grandmother, Adele’s parents and brother, as well as Sophie, who is a bridesmaid and also the daughter of Melanie.

The reader knows at the beginning someone in the wedding party is dead, but doesn’t know until the end who it is or why. As the book progresses, showing the events leading up to the present day, the reader is also given insight into a tragic death that occurred to one of their friends, Ollie, when Adele and Jason were teenagers. Ollie was also the brother of Sophie, as well as Melanie’s son.

The book’s chapters alternate between Adele, Melanie, and Sophie. Adele and Melanie are narrating in the present day whereas Sophie tells the reader about the summer Ollie died. In those chapters, it was clear Sophie was largely an afterthought with her parents as compared to Ollie.

Overall, this book was just okay for me. The ending does explain (mostly) what happened to Ollie and why the person in the wedding party is dead, but there are a few unanswered questions.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for my ARC.

To be honest, I really struggled to get on board with this. I really struggled with the writing style, and almost DNFed a few times.

I did end up sticking through and found some moments enjoyable, but overall I just don’t think this was for me sadly.

Thank you so much to Netgalley, the publisher and the author for the arc. 🫶🏻

Give me a thriller with a group of people and a “who done it” and I’m a happy girl, 5 stars! Highly recommended for anyone wanting a good fast paced read!

The Wedding Party is a thriller that is set both in the present day as Adele prepares to marry Jason and flashbacks to twelve years ago. There’s quite a lot going on in this novel: a group of old friends; grieving mother; and a lying bride. Adele and Jason’s wedding is a chance for friends and family to reunite and celebrate but it seems that many people have their secrets, not all of which will stay hidden. I’m slightly on the fence with this novel, parts of it were brilliant and had me hooked, then other parts just seemed too slow going. It intrigued me enough to want to finish the novel so I would rate it 3.5 stars. Thank you to NetGalley, Aria and Aries and the author for the chance to review.

The storyline is told by several different characters and alternates between the past (12 years ago) and the present.

Something terrible happened one night twelve years ago. Lives were forever changed, and many secrets were created.

In present day, Adele and Jason are quickly approaching their wedding day. One would think they should be blissfully in love, however, things aren't quite as they seem. There may be ulterior motives for each of them wanting to marry each other, but what exactly are they?

I felt the writing was repetitive, and I wanted to give up several times. It took me FIVE DAYS to read this book, which is unusually long for me. I do have to say that the ending wasn't totally predictable, but I still wasn't shocked.

Thank you to NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion/review.

I was so excited to read this, the cover art is stunning but for me this fell flat and I DNF'd at 35%.
Thank you NetGalley, Rebecca Heath and Aria & Aries for this ARC, all opinions expressed are my own.

I typically love books set at weddings because there is so much potential for drama. The Wedding Party, however, was a miss for me. I found the pacing very slow; the first 3/4 of the story dragged. I also spent a long time confused. On multiple occasions one character said to another, “I don’t understand,” and I was glad that I was not the only one who didn’t know what was going on. There are some good twists at the end but the journey there was not lively enough and I didn’t really see the resolution I had hoped for. I received an ARC from NetGalley and I appreciate the opportunity to provide an honest review.

So many secrets. So many rich people behaving badly. So many lies. I do appreciate a wedding gone wrong and the chaos was next level that it was at times hard to keep up. The only character I gravitated toward was the grandmother and her little dog. Any woman a man calls crazy is smarter than him. The twists were not too surprising but I still enjoyed them. This was a quick and entertaining read. TYSM NetGalley!

This is not good. I really didn’t enjoy anything about it. The writing style isn’t appealing, it’s all over the place. The story is so silly. On the surface it has potential. A tragic death 12 years ago, a wedding, guilt etc but it just doesn’t land. None of the characters are redeemable in any way, the story is just ridiculous

Rating - 3.5 stars (rounded to 4)

This was my first book by Rebecca Heath, and I really enjoyed it! This is a multi-timeline murder mystery taking place as everyone returns home for a wedding bringing the past crashing into the present. With the multiple POVs you get to see the story from all sides. At first it was hard to get used to the POVs switching at every chapter, but I got used to the flow after reading a few chapters. I liked how the story began with the upcoming wedding of Adele and Jason, and then used flashbacks to slowly reveal what happened in the past. The suspense slowly builds throughout the book. All in all it was a good thriller that was enjoyable, kept me guessing and made me want to read to the end. Thank you to NetGalley and Aria & Aries Publishing for the ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Thank you NetGalley and the publishers for the opportunity to read this book. I started to read this book the day before some friends were getting married and that was probably not the best decision I could have made... The book goes back and fourth over a three day period and I kept getting the timeline a bit mixed up in my head. I wasn't overly fond of the characters but did enjoy the book. 3.5 stars rounded up to 4.

Thank you Netgalley for the ARC!

This book over promised and unfortunately under delivered. The book had me extremely invested the first 25% but just slowly went downhill after that! I hate writing this but it felt the book just missed a lot of good opportunities.