Thriller set on the coast of SOUTH AUSTRALIA

29th November 2024

The Wedding Party by Rebecca Heath, thriller set on the coast of SOUTH AUSTRALIA.

The novel opens with gusto, introducing a variety of characters who are initially hard to pin down. It pays the reader to sort them early whilst the story takes off.

A group of people has assembled on the South Australian coast, not so far from Adelaide, and they are there to celebrate the upcoming marriage of Adele and Jason, taking place in 3 days’ time. Now, it’s important to understand that Adele, in her teenage years, was enjoying a growing relationship with Ollie, but Ollie died, falling off a jetty on this very bay where they are all now congregated; to this day there is still some mystery about the manner of this death.

Attending the wedding is Ollie’s mother Melanie (an odd choice of invitee, one might surmise) and she is out for vengeance. She carries with her a little bottle of alcohol to dull her senses, and invariably is on the look-out for further tipples. Little, alarming, things then start to occur but she is unclear whether they are due to her befuddled state or whether something more sinister is afoot. Her daughter Sophie is also attending, and she is to be a bridesmaid along with Adele’s best friend Katja (again, this feels like rather an odd choice). Both Melanie and Sophie seem unreliable. Adele’s parents are also present and Adele is alarmed by the fact they seem to be spending money and racking up debt, so much so that a burley man arrives to settle scores in the run-up to the nuptials. Hey, but once their daughter is married to her rich husband, their financial woes will be sorted.

The groom was in Ollie’s friendship group and now Jason promises his bride-to-be both heaven and earth. From the outset his underlying ire seems to be an issue, bubbling just out of reach beneath the surface, and at base Adele, for various reasons, wonders whether she is doing the right thing in marrying this man but she is determined to see the process through to its conclusion. Alarm klaxon at this point!

Dorothy, Jason’s octogenarian grandmother, totters about, clutching her tiny dog, Laila, to her chest, baring her gummy dentures (Dorothy that is, not the dog) and already we have the well worn trope of a dementing senior citizen.

Chapters are told from various points of view, interspersed with flashbacks to 12 years ago, which set the scene for the dynamics amongst the younger generation, detailing the relationships in the lead up to Ollie’s death. It is really important to keep abreast of the chapter headings to avoid confusion.

My thoughts? Firstly, I just couldn’t buy into the premise that a couple would choose to celebrate their future in the very spot where a close friend had died, an event which now – of course – overshadows the celebrations.  Secondly, the author has integrated far too many life events into the plot development, to wit a drunken mother, a wayward sister, affairs, death, a fire, an irascible neighbour, nasty text messages that wobble the couple, a terminal diagnosis – the list is endless, unhelpfully diverting from the nub of the story. The narrative is far too complex and dispassionately told, populated by unlikeable and two-dimensional, angry characters and it’s hard to keep up as it hops about between people and time.

I pushed myself to read to the end and I can guarantee you will not see how the story pans out. Overall, I felt this was a pretty preposterous storyline and I struggled to get on board (and yes, a yacht does feature!) at any significant level.

Not one for me.

Tina for the TripFiction Team

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