Technical Hitch [Paperback]

Jessica is a successful wedding planner based in London. She manages to pull off the perfect day for so many couples; on the morning of her own wedding, she gets cold feet and leaves Nick at the altar, taking the honeymoon they were meant to spend together. Upon returning to London, she realizes her error and wants to get back with Nick. Nick, it seems, has moved on. She also tries to move on, but her heart still belongs to Nick.

Fiona, Nick's sister (and Jess' best friend), is ready to settle down with her new beau (a wedding photographer whom she met at the ill-fated nuptials). She is not sure she wants Jess to get back together with Nick, out of fear that he will be hurt again.

Jess' sister Sophie has what everyone thinks is the perfect marriage with Simon. They eloped in Tahiti, only to find out that their marriage is not valid.

Jess' hugely successful celebrity wedding between a movie star and a "commoner" (purported to be a fairy tale that starts out as a business arrangement for publicity) brings about a new friend in Emma. Though Jack and Emma are virtual strangers, they soon start to fall in love.

I like the modern take on marriage in the new millennium, and while I found it the be a great story, I think that there is far too much marital and relationship strife with such a huge cast of characters - this could easily have been four separate novels! As a result, there is not enough individual development, but I like how Sigaloff keeps up guessing until right up to the end with each of the relationships.

Jessica James spends her life around weddings as a wedding planner. However, her own wedding sends her in a panic. When she left her fiancé at the alter, she did not think about the consequences. Returning from their honeymoon alone, Jess must come to terms with her new life without Nick. She starts by moving in with her happily married sister, Sarah. Jess has a business to run. Losing her assistant and her belief in weddings, Jess continues to work as her personal life dulls.

Emma Hunter is stuck in a PR job with no personal life. Suddenly, after a fairy tail wedding, she becomes the wife of celebrity Jack Carlisle. Nearly strangers, will their relationship turn to love and last?

Jess's best friend Fiona wants to settle down. However, Fiona wonders if she will ever find love.

When Jess's sister Sarah learns that eloping in some foreign country does not make her a wife, she loses her belief in married life. Can Jess save the day?

Technical Hitch is a wonderful book about a wedding planner who loses her perspective. Along the way, Jess has the help of some unlikely friends who help her, while bringing their own problems. Technical Hitch shows the hard side of breaking up, moving on, and still planning weddings in the process. It also helps to show that celebrities have the same kind of marriage problems that everyday people do.

In London wedding planner Jess James is considered one of the best in pulling off a delightful celebration. However, she has failed at one wedding, her own; Jess jilts her groom Nick leaving him at the altar by himself.

Meanwhile, the media goes berserk when womanizing hunk Jack Carlisle falls for plain Jane, Emma Hunter, whom he met on a café line. The wedding goes off perfectly as Jess does her magic, but everyone expects the happily ever after will end abruptly and soonest.

Jess's sister Sarah eloped with the man she believes is her life mate. However, when she learns they were not legally married, Sarah has doubts about tying the knot for real.

Others are also faced with marital decisions. Amy questions the need for the institution except as a means of her pal making money while Nick's sibling Fiona flees from love though she has met the right man.

Though an intriguing slant on marriage and happily ever after, the hitch in this tale is that there are too many players having marital doubts to appreciate any individual although Jess is the prime player. The story line reads more like a series of vignettes that constantly shift focus making it difficult to keep score as to what is happening to whom. Still chick lit readers will appreciate Jane Sigaloff's satirical look at to be or not to be married.

Harriet Klausner