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    Better Off Wed
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    Better Off Wed
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    Better Off Wed
    Audiobook5 hours

    Better Off Wed

    Written by Laura Durham

    Narrated by Stephanie Spicer

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    **Winner of the Agatha Award for Best First Novel!**

    Planning weddings can be murder. But stumbling across dead bodies usually isn’t on the itinerary. Can a wedding planner use her skills to discover who’s killing her clients?

    Society wedding planner Annabelle Archer is no stranger to wedding day stress, but a dead body at her latest fete takes the cake. When suspicion falls on her best friend and caterer Richard Gerard, she knows she must find the real culprit before his career is ruined along with her reputation for solving problems. But it’s no easy feat since the slain mother-of-the-bride was the most hated socialite in the city. As Annabelle navigates DC’s powerful social scene to unmask the culprit, there’s no telling how many more victims the killer will claim or if Annabelle and her friends will be among them.

    Better Off Wed is the first book in the Annabelle Archer cozy mystery series. If you like charming characters, fast-paced comedy, and behind-the-scenes glimpses into the wild world of weddings, then you’ll love Laura Durham’s Agatha award-winning mystery.

    Get Better Off Wed to discover the award-winning mystery series today!

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBroadmoor Books, LLC Audio
    Release dateJul 26, 2018
    ISBN9781949496918
    Unavailable
    Better Off Wed
    Author

    Laura Durham

    Laura Durham has been named Washington, D.C.'s top wedding planner for the past three years by Washingtonian magazine, has been featured in numerous national wedding magazines, and is the author of a wedding planning guide. After graduating from Duke University and stumbling into wedding planning nearly ten years ago, she's lost count of the number of weddings she's planned. So far, though, no one has been murdered at any of them. She is the author of two previous mysteries featuring Annabelle Archer: Better Off Wed, which won the Agatha Award for Best First Novel, and For Better or Hearse.

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    Reviews for Better Off Wed

    3.5/5

    89 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      This was a cute book. I enjoyed it and can see it becoming a series if it hasn't already. Fun quick read.
    • 4/5
      Better Off Wed is a cozy mystery where the amateur sleuth is a wedding planner. The book is fairly well done, and I like the characters so far. Kate's penchant for being slightly wrong with her idioms is cute (at the moment--we'll see if that still holds true going forward). The characters of Richard and Fern are a bit over the top.As always, I do wonder if all Annabelle's mysteries will be murders. If so, I can't imagine most clients would continue to use her as their wedding planner--choose me and have a dead body show up sometime between your rehearsal dinner and your wedding reception--no thanks! And unlike the Goldy Schultz culinary mysteries, it does appear prospective brides and grooms do have other choices that aren't too far away, so it would be harder to justify that people keep choosing her company.I did not guess the identity of the murderer until it was revealed. I also didn't pick up on the clue that Annabelle did that revealed the identity to her.
    • 3/5
      Wedding Planner Annabelle Archer and her assistant Kate fall over the Motherzilla of the bride, Clara Pierce, at the wedding reception. Since she was at the bottom of the stairs they assumed she tripped and fell, it was only when the police informed them that she was poisoned did they realize it was murder. And, they began snooping when the police began examining the caterer, Richard, their friend.The snooping is a bit tedious and lacks logic. They seem to be grasping for anyone other than Richard to have opportunity. Then they guess at the motive. It was an okay read.294
    • 4/5
      Lots of fun! Fancy weddings are a hairs-breadth from disaster anyway, and add in bridezillas, motherzillas-of-brides, and other craziness, and it's a great atmosphere for a cozy murder mystery.The characters and dialog all popped here, and the plot was pretty good- not all that obscure, but the whole ride was enough fun that I didn't mind.At this writing, it's available for free for Kindle, and I recommend it to people who like light, silly mysteries. I will likely read more in the series.
    • 2/5
      The story had a natural flow and the characters were quite believable. The possibility of a romance was hinted at throughout the book but disappointingly never bothered to happen. (Perhaps in the sequel?) The murderer was caught and nothing felt (too) contrived.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed this funny cozy mystery. Everything made sense. Liked the characters. A tiny whiff of possible romance -- absolutely no hint of any love triangles. Certainly did not read like a freebie. Best review I can write for this is that I plan on continuing the series.
    • 3/5
      Wedding planner Annabelle Archer knew the wedding she was working on would be difficult, but she certainly wasn't expecting the mother of the bride to be murdered during the reception. The murder not only hurts Annabelle's reputation as a wedding planner, but her friend Richard Gerard, a caterer, is a major suspect. When there is a second murder which makes Richard even more of a suspect, Annabelle knows she has to work fast to clear his name. She has plenty of suspects but will she figure out who the killer is before she becomes the next victim?"Better Off Wed" is an uneven cozy mystery. The unevenness comes from the characters as some of them are well written and others barely register as characters. Annabelle is well done - good at her job and concerned about her friends. Caterer Richard is also well written and author Laura Durham deserves credit for having readers discover Richard is gay without stating the obvious. Too bad she doesn't do the same with Annabelle's assistant Kate and her habit of mangling familiar sayings - Durham points every single one of them out, which is too bad because it was one of the humorous aspects of the book. Outside of Annabelle, Richard, Kate, and Annabelle's elderly neighbor Leatrice, the rest of the characters aren't well written especially the murder victim's family. Because of this, the murder mystery aspects of the book aren't that interesting and it's hard for readers to try to figure out who the murderer is, which is part of the fun of reading cozy mysteries. And when the murderer finally is revealed, the motive for the murder is unbelievable."Better Off Wed" is just an okay debut cozy mystery novel.
    • 3/5
      I thought this was quite a quaint cozy, and I'm always a sucker for caterers/culinary mysteries. I liked the relationship the main character had with everyone, including her drama queen best friend. I'd hunt for more in this series for a quick read.
    • 2/5
      This cozy-type mystery has some good points: it’s got an interesting hook because the “detective” is a wedding planner and it's a fast read if you are pulled in enough by the story to not put it down. I unfortunately thought the book was really ho hum.The first major downfalls is the sidekicks - the gay caterer friend who is the textbook drama queen, the friend Kate who messes up every saying (that people do not use in normal conversation today) in a really dumb way, like saying “a bird in the hand is worth two bushes” instead of “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.” Another time Kate says she’ll “hold down the fork” instead of “hold down the fort.” It was really corny and not funny at all.The second flaw is that the major part of the story is Annabelle/Richard/Kate questioning people, almost getting in trouble, and the nosy neighbor showing up trying to play detective too. The sort of love interest is the real detective who, other than being hot, isn’t that interesting and has no personality. He seems amused at Annabelle but isn’t that dramatic.I didn't finish the last few chapters because I just didn't care if the killer was caught, I didn't care about Annabelle enough and I'm not sure why, maybe because her friendships all seem superficial. It seems like this story is a cozy mystery but is marketed as a chick-lit type mystery. It would have been way funnier if all the characters were about forty years older and it was marketed as a cozy mystery for older readers. The young women reading this will want juice – hotter stuff going on with the detective, more cutting edge wedding industry fashion, less goofy sayings, less Matlock type detective work.Still all in all I may try one more just to see because others reviewers seem to rave…
    • 3/5
      Meh. Seriously, the characters were well-drawn and likeable, but the plot was ridiculous. I am prepared to suspend a certain amount of disbelief when reading cozies, but this had zero plausibility. Detective Reese would have shut Annabelle down so fast, it would make your head spin. This isn't some podunk town where everybody knows everybody. It's Washington DC and I would suppose the cops would be a bit more professional than Reese and company. And I think Boyd was a cabinet member or some such. That would have been a big bloody deal and Annabelle, Kate and Richard would all have been taken in for questioning. Honestly, don't write down to your readers.