The Summer Wedding
Best-selling British novelist Walker’s (The Love Letter, 2013) latest is a novel about love lost and found again. The story begins at a London university in 1991, where drama students Mia, Leo, Simon, and Laney meet. Quirky Laney and flamboyant Simon begin a turbulent love affair. Stunning actress Mia is in love with a brooding professional actor, but when he disappears, leaving her pregnant, she marries faithful Leo. Twenty years later, Laney and Simon are married for the second time and are trying to keep their respective writing and acting careers afloat, while Leo and Mia, though fantastically successful, lead separate lives. At Mia’s daughter Iris’s splashy wedding to notorious playboy Dougie, past secrets start to spill, including what happened to Iris’ real father. Walker’s characters and their lives are at times lost in the action as this entertaining yet meandering nearly 600-page  romance detours into Africa, Hollywood, and Spain; weaves in myriad characters; and covers diverse subjects, such as horse training and ballooning. --Aleksandra Walker