The Wedding Witch Review
by Erin Sterling
The Wedding Witch by Erin Sterling is the third and final book in the Graves Glen series. Graves Glen is a witchy romance series following the three Penhallow brother, this one focusing on Bowen Penhallow. Quick disclaimer, this is the first book in the series I’ve read (I have a habit of not always reading interconnected romance series in order), so I came into this without the context from the other books.
Rating: 3.5/5
A Brief Summary
The Wedding Witch follows Tamsyn and Bowen, who meet because she finds rare magical items, despite not being a witch. One Christmas they meet in person an instantly are attracted to one another, when Bowen asks for Tamsyn to work exclusively for him. They spend the next year working together, seeing them interact over texts and emails, clearly falling for one another in the process.
Fast forward to the Christmas after they left, and despite the agreement of working together exclusively, Tamsyn finds a once in a lifetime job offering her 1 million dollars. Deciding it’s worth potentially upsetting Bowen, she goes to the wedding happening at Tywll House to steal a brooch. Bowen is also attending this wedding has he has been asked to by his friend Declan, who’s a ghost. The bride is Declan’s ex-girlfriend, who thinks Declan is dead and not a ghost as the result of a spell gone wrong. Through a magical mishap, Bowen and Tamsyn are sent back to Tywll house in 1958 at Yule for a different wedding, the one between Bowen’s grandparents. They work together to get back to the future, falling in love more as they pretend to be married to avoid any issues whilst in 1958.
My Thoughts
The first thing that comes to mind when I think of this book is, you have to ignore the confusing bits. A lot of suspension of disbelief is needed to get through this book. There’s a good amount of events/elements that don’t really make sense if you think too deeply, so if you want to enjoy your time reading, you’ve gotta ignore them. I think that’s the problem with having time travel as a major plot of your romance book. I enjoyed seeing Bowen and Tamsyn in 1958, but the time travel itself felt very confusing. Emerald being alive obviously makes sense, no clue how Declan is around and I’m confused about Emerald giving the request to Tamsyn, unless Emerald simply hadn’t arrived yet when they went back in time? I’m not sure which is why I’m confused. I have no clue how Declan is connected to this, like? However, I liked this book enough to ignore it and just let it be.
Another thing to note is the insta-love vibes between Bowen and Tamsyn. We see their first meeting in the prologue (or is it chapter one? either one), then we get email and texts exchanges to cover the 1 year time period between the opening chapter and the actual timeline of the book. It’s clear at their first meeting that they are very attracted to one another, but you can tell the fall for each other over the course of the 1 year time period. I personally wouldn’t count it as actually being insta-love but also, if someone else read this and thought that, I wouldn’t fault them. Since they are attracted to each other from their first meeting, and they are also very much into/in love with each other at Tywll House, you don’t really get to see them figuring out their feelings, coming to terms with them and all the other fun things. For that reason, i can understand why this relationship might not be everyone’s favourite. Personally, I really loved their relationship, I had a lot of fun reading their story. Honestly, I think this makes sense in this particular story because if we had to see them grapple with their feelings and attraction to one another whilst dealing with the time travel plot, I think ti would have felt too messy and cluttered.
Since this is the book I started with in this series, I feel like my opinions on Bowen and Tamsyn may be different to people who read this series in order. This is particularly true for Tamsyn’s character, since I understand that she is an antagonist in a prior book (pretty sure it’s the Ex Hex?). I think that’s something to note if you’ve read this far into my review. I love both of these characters so much, but I came in with a blank slate. I had a similar thing with Winter from Elsie Silver’s Chestnut Spring series. Reading the books in reverse chronological order meant that I read Winter and Theo’s story (book 4) before Summer and Rhett’s story (book 1), so my opinions are different to those who read the series in chronological order. Whilst I don’t think in either scenario, you’re reading experience is negatively affected by not reading the books in chronological/publication order, it does mean that there’s context you lack or things to are revealed because you read a later book first.
My Final Thoughts
Whilst I thought the time travel aspect was a unique and different situation to put Bowen and Tamsyn in, it came at the cost of their relationship developing. Although I liked their relationship in this book, I wish we got more time to see their relationship develop, particularly given the whole ghost situation with Declan and Tamsyn looking for magical objects to save Declan (not that she knew). Time travel isn’t a side plot, so it would have to be the focus. It was not the most well-executed plot line either, as I was left with many, many questions I chose to overlook for the sake of enjoying myself. Of course, this is a romance book so the relationship should be the main focus, but when you do something like time travel, it does have no choice but to be a major part of the book, it can’t be relegated to a side plot.
Ultimately, I really did have a fun time reading this book and I definitely would reread it again in December. If you think you can overlook the confusion of the time travel plot, I would recommend this book for sure. I look forward to reading the first two books in the series (the Ex Hex and Kiss Curse), especially since I think it will make my rereading of the Wedding Witch better and I’ve heard those two are better.