The Wedding Quilt: An Elm Creek Quilts Novel [Hardcover]

"The Wedding Quilt" is the most recent installment in the Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini and finds us returning to Elm Creek Manor, where the series began in 1999 with "The Quilter's Apprentice." The novel opens with an invitation to the wedding of Caroline Sylvia McClure and Leonardo Joseph Fiore which is to take place on September 23, 2028. The novel covers the week leading up to the wedding and all the preparations that take place at Elm Creek Manor which is the site of the event. Caroline McClure is the daughter of Sarah and Matthew McClure whom we met in the first novel upon their arrival at the Manor many years ago. Many of the original Elm Creek quilters come back for the festivities so we get to catch up with their stories and even characters that don't come to the event are referenced and what is happening with them is shared.

I was very much looking forward to having the storyline return to Elm Creek since several of the more recent installments have taken us to other locations or back in time such as to the time period of the Civil War. I had missed many of the characters that had not been part of the narratives and was looking forward to catching up since many of them felt like old friends. To be perfectly candid, this novel was just "all right" for me and a bit of a disappointment (my first disappointment in the series in fact). Since we jumped ahead so many years, I felt like my head was spinning rather than being brought along on the journey and that I missed out on a lot. While the reader is brought up-to-date with a vast number of characters (maybe all) it is done so quickly and for so many that it wasn't a comfortable read -- "choppy" is the best word to describe it, I think. The back stories from previous books are summarized and then what has transpired over many, many years is tacked on. It felt to me like the last book in series where everything from all the books is brought together and finalized. Some of the flashbacks that conveyed new information such as the birth of the twins to Sarah and Matthew are wonderful, but most of it felt hurried and abrupt to me. I actually did searches on the Internet to find out if this was the last book and I had just missed it, but it appears more books will be forthcoming.

I really struggled with an overall rating since I wanted to love the book and some portions are marvelously written with great character development and style. Trying to balance that out with other portions that fell short of my expectations and weren't enjoyable to read was a difficult challenge. I decided on a 3-star but feel sad doing so. If you are a first-time reader, please don't start with this book. Go back to the beginning and enjoy a master storyteller. By the time you get to this one, you will be in a better position to understand who all these people are and give some grace to a book that is not up to the usual quality or standard.

In Jennifer Chiaverini's The Wedding Quilt, the story of the Elm Creek Quilters seems to be coming to a close. This is a wonderful series, of which I have read almost every book. The story begins with the invitation to Sarah and Matt's daughter Caroline's wedding - about 20 years after the last book was set. As Sarah waits for her daughter to arrive at Elm Creek Manor, she remembers the day Caroline and her twin brother James were born.

This pattern continues throughout the book. The current wedding story line is interwoven with stories from the past. It is a good way for readers of the series to catch up with their favorite quilters with glimpses into their lives for the last 20 years. Readers are also able to learn some items that we didn't know - for example, how active Agnes was in the community and why she had attached herself so deeply to Waterford.

There's a little bit of drama throughout the book, in various story lines, that keeps the book moving. There's also sadness. I came to the conclusion about 1/3 of the way through that this was probably the end of a series I really liked. According to Jennifer's website, this is not the last book in the series - that there is probably 1 more book to go. Even with the feeling that it was drawing to a close, I enjoyed this book. It brought closure to several story lines from other books, and it's a nice book-end to the first book, when Sarah arrives at Elm Creek Manor to work for Sylvia. I wonder where she will take the quilters next and who the next generation of Elm Creek Quilters will be?

I received this book from the publisher through the NetGalley program. I was not required to write a positive review. All opinions are my own.

Right off the bat I missed the part in the wedding invitation where it said it was 2028 so I was thrown by a few things, like Sarah text-messaging her husband "25 years ago". Once I got that straightened out it made a little more sense.

Since it takes place so far in the future, the author threw in a few futuristic things that I found a little distracting, like the "aught aught party" and the suborbital transport. Also, in 2028, when you have way too much to drink, you don't get trashed, you get blonked. Someone is probably going to have a lot of fun with this book if they actually read it in 2028. But then again, Back to the Future has held up well, so who knows. But here and there the book had a kind of science fiction feel to it that just wasn't quite right.

The issue I really had with the book was the length. I think it would have been better to have a shorter book, about the length of The Christmas Quilt, and stuck just with what has happened since the last book and the wedding. Instead, Chiaverini attempted to summarize the whole series into one book. We left the present for so long at a time that I forgot what was actually happening in the story. And some parts of it were such a rehash of older books that I found them kind of boring. With so much back and forth I felt the story was choppy and hard to follow. I did enjoy hearing about what happened to the University Realty guy and Diane's son. It's no spoiler to say that a few of the characters have died and I felt there wasn't enough about Sylvia. We know she died and that was about it. Same with Agnes. Yet she went into detail about the preservation of Union Hall and how Anna and Jeremy got together, things you'd know from having read the earlier books.

It wasn't a bad book, just hard to follow and a lot of "been there read that" for anyone who has read the whole series. And if you hadn't read the whole series, I don't think it would make much sense.

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