“Brought up in a caravan on a settled trailer park, Vicky could not be happier with her life. At 15 she is engaged to her childhood friend Liam, the handsomest man on the park. Not only that, but she can't help feeling she's got the balance of her life just right. She's doing well at school and if she works hard she might even fulfill her dream of becoming a dressmaker.
But as she turns 17 the pressure is on for her and Liam to set a date for the wedding, and suddenly Vicky is not so sure. How can she give up her dreams and spend the rest of her life looking after Liam? Especially as her classmate Jordan seems a far more exciting prospect...
What on earth is a girl to do? She loves Liam, but Jordan makes her feel things she's never felt before, and her best friend Kelly's life seems so much more fun than her own limited options. But can she really turn her back on her friends and family and survive in a hostile world?
In the year running up to her wedding, Vicky is about to find out that life outside the traveller community is a lot more complicated than she'd thought...”
Seventeen-year-old gypsy Vicky is expected to settle down with her fiancé Liam very soon: they’ve been engaged since Vicky was fifteen and their families are getting impatient. Vicky loves Liam, but longs to become a dressmaker, a dream which will have to be firmly set aside once she walks down the aisle: gypsy wives don’t work. Going to college to study dressmaking has opened up a whole new world to Vicky, a world in which she could give up her traveller life and go out having fun with her best friend Kelly and do something about her feelings for fellow college student Jordan.
Obviously this book is looking to appeal to the viewers of the very popular television series ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. It manages to capture the flavour of the gypsy world very well without either glamorising or demonising it. I found if fascinating to read about the logistics of having a family of five living permanently in a caravan. The little details that Lace gives throughout the novel really helped to create a complete picture of Vicky’s life.
Naturally the traveller characters play by the rules of the gypsy world, some of which seemed peculiar to me, but Lace explains the reasoning behind them clearly. It is perhaps the young age of marriage that a lot of non-travellers would struggle with most, and it was constantly on my mind just how juvenile Vicky and her fiancé were. I liked what I saw of Liam and how he treated his betrothed, but for me to really believe in the love between Liam and Vicky, I would have liked to have seen more of the couple together.
In truth I thought that I knew exactly what was going to happen in this book just from reading the first chapter, but I’m happy to say that I was wrong. Although the ending was unusual, I think Lace made the right decision with it: she listened to her characters and not to what her readers would have anticipated.
This isn’t a book I’d necessarily have chosen myself, but the setting really made it stand out and ‘Gypsy Wedding’ was an unexpected hit with me. The author kept me guessing what her heroine was going to decide until the very end and I was surprised by how involved I became in Vicky’s life, which is a real tribute to Lace’s writing. The ending was unforeseen, but worked well and was the correct choice for the protagonist.
4 stars
But as she turns 17 the pressure is on for her and Liam to set a date for the wedding, and suddenly Vicky is not so sure. How can she give up her dreams and spend the rest of her life looking after Liam? Especially as her classmate Jordan seems a far more exciting prospect...
What on earth is a girl to do? She loves Liam, but Jordan makes her feel things she's never felt before, and her best friend Kelly's life seems so much more fun than her own limited options. But can she really turn her back on her friends and family and survive in a hostile world?
In the year running up to her wedding, Vicky is about to find out that life outside the traveller community is a lot more complicated than she'd thought...”
Seventeen-year-old gypsy Vicky is expected to settle down with her fiancé Liam very soon: they’ve been engaged since Vicky was fifteen and their families are getting impatient. Vicky loves Liam, but longs to become a dressmaker, a dream which will have to be firmly set aside once she walks down the aisle: gypsy wives don’t work. Going to college to study dressmaking has opened up a whole new world to Vicky, a world in which she could give up her traveller life and go out having fun with her best friend Kelly and do something about her feelings for fellow college student Jordan.
Obviously this book is looking to appeal to the viewers of the very popular television series ‘My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding’. It manages to capture the flavour of the gypsy world very well without either glamorising or demonising it. I found if fascinating to read about the logistics of having a family of five living permanently in a caravan. The little details that Lace gives throughout the novel really helped to create a complete picture of Vicky’s life.
Naturally the traveller characters play by the rules of the gypsy world, some of which seemed peculiar to me, but Lace explains the reasoning behind them clearly. It is perhaps the young age of marriage that a lot of non-travellers would struggle with most, and it was constantly on my mind just how juvenile Vicky and her fiancé were. I liked what I saw of Liam and how he treated his betrothed, but for me to really believe in the love between Liam and Vicky, I would have liked to have seen more of the couple together.
In truth I thought that I knew exactly what was going to happen in this book just from reading the first chapter, but I’m happy to say that I was wrong. Although the ending was unusual, I think Lace made the right decision with it: she listened to her characters and not to what her readers would have anticipated.
This isn’t a book I’d necessarily have chosen myself, but the setting really made it stand out and ‘Gypsy Wedding’ was an unexpected hit with me. The author kept me guessing what her heroine was going to decide until the very end and I was surprised by how involved I became in Vicky’s life, which is a real tribute to Lace’s writing. The ending was unforeseen, but worked well and was the correct choice for the protagonist.
4 stars
RSS Feed