Book Review: No One Wants To Be Miss Havisham

Book: No One Wants To Be Miss Havisham by Brigid Coady

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Publisher: HarperCollins UK: HarperImpulse

Description:

What the Dickens is going on?

Edie Dickens is a shark of a divorce lawyer. She doesn’t believe in love and she scoffs at happily ever afters, however she’s agreed to be maid of honour for her oldest friend, Mel in two weeks and she still has the hen night to endure. But she has even more to endure when she’s visited by Jessica Marley’s ghost and finds out she must change her ways or end up being damned to an eternity watching other people’s happiness. Edie is visited by the Ghosts of Weddings Past, Present and Future, every Friday night until the day of the wedding. Can she learn from her mistakes in time? And did the ghosts send the hunky new lawyer, Jack Twist, to distract her?


Rating: 5 stars

Review:

This was an interesting retelling of A Christmas Carol. In this story, Edwina "Edie" Dickens is a divorce lawyer with an extreme type A personality. Where mean spirited Ebenezer Scrooge hated to part with any money, Edie who is also mean spirited has let her job take precedence in her life and no longer expresses any feelings or love for anyone. Love and marriage mean nothing to her especially when she feels that love isn't real or won't last. Edie rarely doles out a kind word to anyone, she's known as being an Ice Queen.

Following the death of her friend (or just long time acquaintance) Jessica Marley, Edie soon found herself being visited by Jessica's ghost. Edie was then told that to ensure that she wasn't going to wind up like Jessica, an emotionless empty shell, she would need to change her ways. And she was also going to be visited by three more ghosts, something Edie was not looking forward to.

The day after Jessica's ghost showed up, Edie was out of sorts when she met the new lawyer at the firm, Jack Twist. Besides being handsome and annoying, he was a former professional rugby player who decided to go back into law. It's an understatement to say that he had thrown her off guard nearly as much as Jessica's ghost had.

Once the first ghost, the Ghost of Weddings Past showed up, Edie had to see again many of the things she had hoped to have forgotten which also included the mistakes she made in her past relationship with her ex-boyfriend Tom.

In the mist of all this Edie was the maid of honor for her best friend Mel and during the bachelorette weekend Edie soon found herself keeper of a secret she didn't want. Mel's mom told Edie that she and her husband are planning on getting divorced. They also had not told Mel because they didn't want to ruin their daughter's wedding. Edie also ended running into Jack at the nightclub the ladies had gone to adding even more tension to the evening.

With weeks still before the wedding, Edie decides that she's going to try to keep Mel's parents together by first calling them in to meet with her for mediation. However mediation is not her forte. The week long mediation sessions were soon out of her control with the couple's anger and animosity becoming more intense as the sessions went along. Out of her element, Jack ended not only taking over her mediation but also taking her clients as well and that didn't sit well with her.

In between being haunted, Edie tried to change and become a better person by trying to help others but it kept backfiring. Her life was turning upside down. Was it too late for her to change or is she fated to have the future she saw from the last ghost?

This was a very well written and wonderful book that was a blend of funny moments and heartfelt moments as Edie dealt with her life and finally stop closing herself off from the world. I thought all the characters added something to story even the ones who seemed annoying. I liked Edie, she started out very cynical and although she was a little reluctant to change at first she realized it was what she needed to grow.

I also really liked Jack, he had a fun and outgoing personality. And as her love interest, I like that you could easily see the chemistry between them even if Edie was fighting it. But there was something I didn't like about Jack just a little in this story. I felt like this was supposed to be Edie's much needed journey to transforming from an Ice Queen to a more caring person but Jack sometimes kept appearing and being at the exact moment she needed to go it alone to prove to herself she was making a sincere effort to change. It's almost as if he had a hero complex in regards to Edie, she couldn't even do this fundraiser she signed up for to rappel down a building alone without him at the last minute joining her.

But that little bit aside, I enjoyed reading this. It's been a while since I've read any Chick Lit and I'm glad I picked this one, it was a clever fun read.