Always the Bridesmaid

December 15, 2003
For any bridesmaid who's gone down the aisle too many times accompanying others, Lyles's uneven but perky debut will provoke many grins and groans. Wedding-weary Cate Padgett, kindergarten teacher, freelance photographer and reluctant San Diego single, has endured more than her share of "bride's slave" duties. She's had to buy overpriced shower presents, don nightmarish wedding garb she can hardly afford and suffer through a bachelorette party where she's given a lipstick vibrator for a favor, along with a penis crown she's supposed to wear while having a lap dance from a male stripper her pal Val calls "Cheesedick." Cate would much rather plan her own wedding, but she's having trouble figuring out who her groom should be—GQ
-cool "No Call Paul" or her faithful friend, caterer Ethan Blakely? Although Lyles's prose style wavers from wooden to wonderful, her eye for delightful details—a bride who becomes a controlling and fiendishly demanding diva, the ubiquitous wedding drunk, over-orchestrated "fairy tale" touches that backfire (brides falling off of bucking horses are so not
Martha Stewart) and a freakish costume change at a Hotel del Coronado wedding that leads to Cate's happy ending—makes this the ultimate bridesmaid gift. Agent, Julie Burton at Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.

December 15, 2003
With a closetful of tulle and dyed-to-match shoes, Cate Padgett is beginning to wonder if she is on her way to becoming a career bridesmaid. Could she already be doomed, at the age of 26, to a future of unflattering dresses and embarrassing wedding toasts? Though she has hopes of marrying her handsome boyfriend, Paul, his hot-and-cold behavior and frequent, lengthy business trips make her despair of ever having a wedding of her own. When a chance encounter at (where else?) a friend's wedding reception brings Cate's high-school best friend Ethan back into her life, she's faced with an age-old question: Should she dump the unreliable Paul and pursue the safe and steady Ethan? There's not much new in this story of matrimonial hope rewarded; this is a tale that's been told many, many times before, and most readers will predict the novel's outcome by the end of the first chapter. Still, the outlandish wedding mishaps and twentysomething angst will appeal to fans of the plucky-single-girl genre.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)