{"id":4509,"date":"2022-07-22T06:36:46","date_gmt":"2022-07-22T13:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4509"},"modified":"2022-07-22T06:36:46","modified_gmt":"2022-07-22T13:36:46","slug":"paula-munier-the-wedding-plot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/paula-munier-the-wedding-plot\/","title":{"rendered":"Paula Munier: The Wedding Plot"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Paula Munier\u2019s insanely readable Mercy Carr series has so far never disappointed, and The Wedding Plot<\/em> is no exception.\u00a0 As the book opens, Mercy\u2019s mother, Grace, has been meticulously planning her mother\u2019s wedding to her long-time beau Claude at the swanky inn her aunt Prudence runs (with an iron fist).\u00a0\u00a0 Between these two intimidating ladies, the wedding is proceeding on a path that looks to have Mercy in bridesmaid\u2019s satin pumps and a blowout hairdo before she knows it.<\/p>\n

It would not be a mystery novel, however, if all went as planned.\u00a0 Frist, the spa\u2019s yoga instructor disappears, and Mercy is pressed into service, leading the wedding guests through the classes he was supposed to take on.\u00a0 And while all this sounds slightly like a cozy set up \u2013 wedding, yoga instructor (and wait, there are goats) \u2013 it\u2019s far from it.\u00a0 Munier takes a normal domestic situation \u2013 a wedding, something everyone has experienced as guest or participant \u2013 and turns it into an action novel.<\/p>\n

Turns out the yoga instructor may not have been exactly as he presented himself, and when a dead man turns up in one of the barns at the goat farm (I told you!) where he lived, things accelerate.\u00a0 While in previous novels, Munier has brought the wild beauty of Vermont to the forefront, in this novel she writes about the goat cheese that also makes Vermont famous. The details of the goats and the woman who owns the farm all provide the rich Vermont background readers have come to expect.<\/p>\n

When the wedding festivities actually begin, with Mercy and her boyfriend Troy (and their dogs) in attendance, troubles on the groom\u2019s side of the family begin to make themselves apparent.\u00a0 Again, Munier is using this very normal domestic situation and amping it up with a kind of legendary family friction, devolving at one point to fist fights.\u00a0 The book is grounded by the domestic, and kept in flight by the action, which involves Mercy, Troy, and their trained rescue dogs, Elvis and Susie Bear, with a healthy tally of bodies and gun fights throughout.<\/p>\n

Mercy reminds me very much of the character that drew me to mystery fiction as an adult: Sara Paretsky\u2019s V.I. Warshawski.\u00a0 Like V.I., Mercy is incredibly stubborn, incredibly brave and incredibly smart, but all those things sometime combine to make her actions horrendously irritating to her family who are (somewhat foolishly) hoping for a no-drama wedding weekend.\u00a0 When Mercy finally dons her bridesmaid\u2019s dress you feel sorry for the dress.\u00a0 You just know it\u2019s destined for ruin.<\/p>\n

The mystery part of the novel is clever and intertwined with all the threads of the novel, including some old bones discovered by Elvis and Susie Bear in the woods by the inn where the wedding is taking place.\u00a0 I was rooting for the wedding to happen but in true master of suspense fashion, Munier keeps the reader guessing until the very end about what is going to happen on that front, as well as many others.\u00a0 This was a fast, fun, intelligent read, sweetened (as these books always are) by the literary epigraphs that begin each chapter.\u00a0 True to this book\u2019s theme, they are all about love.\u00a0 I\u2019ll jump in \u2013 I loved this book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Paula Munier\u2019s insanely readable Mercy Carr series has so far never disappointed, and The Wedding Plot is no exception.\u00a0 As the book opens, Mercy\u2019s mother, Grace, has been meticulously planning her mother\u2019s wedding to her long-time beau Claude at the swanky inn her aunt Prudence runs (with an iron fist).\u00a0\u00a0 Between these two intimidating ladies, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[876,539,100,252,875,877,25,854],"class_list":["post-4509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-cheese","tag-mercy-carr","tag-minotaur-books","tag-paula-munier","tag-rescue-dogs","tag-the-wedding-plot","tag-vermont","tag-wedding-gone-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4509"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4511,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4509\/revisions\/4511"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}