July Chick Lit Challenge Read #1: The Wedding Beat

What better time to read about weddings than the summer? I decided to read The Wedding Beat by Devan Sipher for my July Chick Lit Plus Challenge read. I had heard great things about this book and I'm so glad I got the chance to read it! Also, as a fun aside, this was one of the first books I got from my new library - three cheers for public libraries! :)

Here's the synopsis for this book:

Sometimes the best man isn't even in the wedding party...
Gavin Greene is a hopeless romantic. He's also a professional one: he writes the wedding column for a Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, covering spectacular parties from coast to coast. But there's a thin line between being a hotshot reporter on assignment...and being a single guy alone on a Saturday night at someone else's wedding.
Everything changes on New Year's when Gavin meets Melinda, a travel writer with enchanting dimples. A moonlit stroll across a Manhattan rooftop seals the deal. Until an Aussie with attitude swoops in and whisks her away before Gavin gets her number.
Gavin crisscrosses New York City to find her again. And he learns that there's something worse than losing the woman of his dreams: Having to write an article about her wedding.

What interested me most about reading this book was finding out what it was like to read a chick lit-esque novel that was narrated by a male. Turns out it was pretty neat! I think Sipher is a little bit of a romantic, though I knew he wrote the Vows column for The New York Times so it shouldn't have been that surprising! It was fun to see a guy pine over and then obsessively search for a woman he met briefly at a party. Turns out guys can act just as nutty as females when it comes to dating :)

I think I wanted this book to be a little bit longer. It was just under 300 pages and I think I needed just a bit more. I believe part of that desire comes from the fact that I wanted the ending to be written a little bit differently. Don't get me wrong, I like how it all turned out for Gavin but it left me wanting more, and not in a good way. It was sort of "boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy has to write about girl's upcoming wedding, are boy and girl going to get together?, question answered, and done. There was no explanation as to how the question was answered. I feel like I was left to make too many assumptions and that was a bit unfortunate.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Wedding Beat. I think Devan Sipher did an awesome job of creating a story that gave me just enough romance and amusement. I definitely recommend this one, especially for a summer read. What better time to read about weddings than the summer?

Have you read this one? What did you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts!

Happy reading :)