A novel of honey, love and manners. The Wedding Bees tells the tale of Sugar Wallace, who moves around the US taking care of her bees and her neighbours.
It also gave the author Sarah-Kate Lynch a lovely research trip round the United States and the chance to learn a lot about bees!
I’m liking
The main character, Sugar Wallace, was lots of fun. I’d love to meet someone like her in real life.
The minor characters were a great selection of grumpy/shy/sad people, most of whom just needed a bit of help to find their better selves. I also liked Elizabeth the Sixth, the queen bee. The story had a lot of amusing moments, a few sad ones and some that gave me warm fuzzies.
However, I think my favourite bit of this book was the acknowledgments section! I really enjoyed reading about how Sarah-Kate came to write The Wedding Bees and about some of the things that she’d learnt and people she’d met as part of her research. I would love to read a book by Sarah-Kate Lynch with more about bees – her enthusiasm really came through.
I enjoyed reading a book that was set in New York but showed a quieter side of life there – just people going about their everyday lives.
Things that made me go hmmmm
I only had very small complaints about this book. Firstly, I was enjoying the fact that the picture on the cover looked exactly like the Sugar Wallace I pictured in my head, but then right near the end the book said that she had brown eyes!
Other than that, the story was a bit predictable in places, and I found some of the obstacles put before the main characters were stretching it a bit.
The conclusion
I enjoyed The Wedding Bees and would recommend it to someone looking for a cheerful, fun love story. It would also be fun to read if you were planning a holiday to New York (even an armchair holiday) and you might learn a bit about beekeeping as a bonus! It has a lovely cover (in spite of my complaint!) so I think it would make a good present too.
