DNF: A Wedding Invitation by Alice Wisler

I think I have a record of unfinished books this years. I get to about page 100 and for some reason rarely finish. Sometimes there's no good reason as I am enjoying the book but in this case I can tell you exactly why I didn't finish.

I brought this book with me to jury duty (I was excused! yay!) and even then I was setting it down to daydream or check my email on my phone. The tone of the book starts out very down, the protagonist seems like someone just going through the motions of her life when she gets a wedding invitation. She attends the wedding but by some weird mix-up it turns out she doesn't know the people getting married. Interspersed with her attending the wedding are memories of time she spent in the Philippines in a refugee camp several years earlier.

The problem is that none of the stories progressed quickly enough for me and the general misery of the protagonist at not being married with kids was a turn-off. The prose was not exceptional and the story was full of obvious metaphors like her aunt keeping butterflies and releasing them as a way of dealing with grief.

A Wedding Invitation is probably a fine book, but it just didn't hold my interest. The writing wasn't enough to offset the slow development of the plot, therefore I will not be finishing it.

I received a copy of this book from the publisher.