Dial A for Aunties

Brief Synopsis:

Meddy, her mom and her aunts all believe that the women in their family are cursed. All of the men in their family either pass away or leave them for one reason or another, whether it’s fathers, sons, uncles, nephews or casual boyfriends. Meddy takes this curse with her to college, and when she meets Nathan, who is conceivably perfect in every way, she carries the weight of the curse with her through their relationship. She prematurely ends the relationship when things start getting too serious for two reasons: fear of the curse, and fear of letting her mom and aunts down.

Now, four years after the breakup, Meddy lives with her mom and helps her and her aunts run a wedding business. Meddy is the photographer, her mother does the flowers, and her aunts all have various talents that they have brought into the business with them. They’ve grown quite successful, and are on the eve of a really big day for them. Meddy finds out that her meddlesome-but-caring family have set her up on a blind date with who they believe to be the owner of the hotel the big wedding is at, and Meddy feels like she can’t say no or something bad is going to go wrong with the business.

However, the date goes very badly. The guy is a pompous jerk that keeps flaunting about how rich he is, and when they leave, he pretty much tells Meddy that he isn’t about to take no for an answer and she isn’t allowed to be a tease. He drives them down a secluded road and Meddy panics and uses her taser. They wreck, and when she wakes up, she’s certain that she’s killed this jerk of a date. Through her haze, she puts his body in the trunk, drives home and tells her mom. Her mom automatically calls the aunts and they all make up a plan for what they’re going to do with the body.

They store it in a cooler at Big Aunt’s bakery overnight, but when they wake up the next morning, they realize the cooler was accidentally taken to the hotel for the wedding. They all panic and hightail it there, just to make another gruesome discovery: he wasn’t actually dead when they thought he was, but he died because he couldn’t get out of the cooler. I know, what is even happening!?

Just to make matters better, they find out that he wasn’t even the hotel owner, he was some skeeze that was picking up on Meddy and lied about it all. But guess who the hotel owner IS? If you didn’t guess Nathan, I don’t know what to say. Because it is Nathan, and he’s looking even more scrumptious than Meddy remembered. He seems to feel the same way about Meddy, and they just keep running into each other. Meddy and her family spend the morning trying to juggle their duties with the wedding with, you know, not being caught with a dead body and arrested for murder. Of course things get tossed into the mix. The groom and all of his groomsmen are trashed and passed out, they can’t decide what they’re going to do with the body, and it’s getting harder and harder for Meddy to pretend that everything is okay. When Jake’s (the body) phone starts ringing, Meddy can’t believe her bad luck when she sees it’s the maid of honor.

She finds out that the maid of honor and Jake (which isn’t actually his name, it’s who he was pretending to be. I know, it’s confusing) have decided that they’re going to steal all of the super-lavish gifts and make off with them. Meddy DOES steal the gifts, because she feels like she has to or Maureen, the MOH, is going to know that something isn’t right with Jake. They discover the gifts are missing quicker than expected, though, and Maureen makes the decision to blame the photographer. I.E. Meddy.

Nathan stops by Meddy’s room while she’s trying to figure all of this out and they have a super steamy and intense makeout and tell each other they want to talk things through. However, he peeks in her room, sees the body, and thinks that she has another guy in her bed. I know, can anything else go wrong!? He leaves behind his master key, along with his broken heart (I had to) and she uses the opportunity to sneak into Maureen’s room and deposit the stolen goods just in time: the search for the presents is on, and Maureen has tried to frame Meddy. Her mom & the aunts work to move Jake before her room is searched, and in turn she suggests Maureen’s is looked at next.

The jig is seemingly up for Maureen, who’s caught red handed and escorted out. Following this, Meddy’s really busy with the wedding photos and prep and isn’t able to talk to her mom or aunts about what happened to the body until the actual ceremony starts. There, she discovers that her mom and aunt got all of the groomsmen drunk and high and they come stumbling down the aisle… with the body. They were so messed up they didn’t realize they weren’t dragging a passed out pal, but a corpse. The wedding falls apart and a bunch of them literally fall into the pool, then someone realizes one of them is dead.

The sheriff shows up and starts throwing his weight around and ends up arresting Nathan, which is so stupid and doesn’t make any sense. Meddy has a showdown with her family that leaves a bad taste in her mouth, so she decides to help Nathan out. She pretends she’s his attorney, but the sheriff isn’t really budging, so she goes back to her room… where Maureen is holding her family at gunpoint. She tells Meddy that she has to steal the tea gifts back and help her convince Jackie, the bride, that she isn’t such a bad person after all. With her family at gunpoint, she feels like she has no choice.

However, when Meddy gets to Jackie’s room and they get to really talking, Meddy realizes that not only is Jackie not meant for her crappy to-be-husband, who literally just hired a bunch of dudes he didn’t know to be his groomsmen because he has no friends, but that Maureen is actually in love with Jackie and wanted the wedding to fail because of this reason. In the midst of all of the whirlwind garbage that has become her life, she brings Jackie and Maureen together, who bonded with her family and didn’t actually have a loaded gun pointed at her family after all.

The book ends pretty well, and things are happy, and that makes me happy. I really liked Nathan, and I didn’t understand how they were going to get away with the whole corpse thing, but… while not totally realistic, I can dig it. Not to mention that there’s going to be a sequel!

My Rating:

7/10. It was a really fun ride, had elements I wasn’t expecting, and I am eager to read the next.

Spice Rating:

It was fairly tame, I’ll go with 4/10. But we’ll see if it picks up in the next!

A Similar Vibe:

Weekend at Bernie’s. I know, I know.

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Until next time <3