The flurry of wedding plans is continually interrupted by outside events. Amanda’s best friend and matron of honor Bonnie is endangered when her abusive husband escapes from prison. A skeleton is found underneath Bonnie’s family home, a huge antebellum mansion on a river bluff, in the caves once used by the Underground Railroad. Clearly this is evidence of a much more recent death, and the location of the remains strongly suggests murder.

The local sheriff, a friend of the family and father of another of Amanda’s wedding attendants, is investigating rumors of a paramilitary organization and arms smuggling in the county, and asks Molly to keep her ears open for useful rumors. All of these seemingly unrelated threads come together at the big event - the wedding.

This cozy with a rural setting and strong female characters did have its appeal, but overall I found it an uneven read. There is a good deal of interesting background information here, from details about life in rural Ohio (“Insults were the Appalachian hello”), Civil War history and Civil War reenactors, gender differences in conversational styles, personality types ...

The problem is, this was not always interwoven into the story, but rather presented in lumps that while entertaining in themselves did nothing to move the story along. The story itself was less than engrossing. One humorous scene, where a group of women use male discomfort with female “mysteries” to win the day strained my credulity to breaking point (though that did not stop me from appreciating the jest). So as I said, mixed reactions; Mother of the Bride is interesting in the details, but less interesting in the actual mystery.

--Jeri Wright