The Kensingtons invite you to the society wedding of the decade. There’s just one hitch. You might not make it out alive.
This wedding of the decade is a destination wedding, and I had no idea what a destination wedding was. A destination wedding is an advanced planned wedding in a foreign country, usually at a high end resort, where the couple, the wedding party and their guests stay for about a week, and where all activities related to that wedding take place. So you obviously have to be rich to have a destination wedding.
The bride is Adrianna Kensington. She is marrying tech millionaire Mark Li. A spoiled brat, Adrianna is the billionaire heiress to an international nightclub empire, and she attended the Kensington Manor School in New York. Three years ago, she was kidnapped by a stalker who held her captive for three days. Their wedding will take place on a private island, but how safe is this private island?
And the bridesmaids? They weren’t even picked by Adrianna because of close friendships. They were chosen by her father because of the influence they had, and they all also attended Kensington Manor School. Did Adrianna know them? Yes, but close friends they are not.
It all starts with the murder of a bridesmaid, but is that the end of it or not? Why was the bridesmaid murdered? That is how Holly is brought into the mess that is the Kensington family. Seven years after graduating, Holly is a whiz of a forensic attorney with blue hair and a lip piercing. Mark Li hires her to catch the murderer of the bridesmaid and potentially discover who kidnapped his bride-to-be all those years ago. He wants this person caught.
By accepting the job of investigating this murder while pretending to be the replacement bridesmaid, Holly is putting her own life in danger.
Each one in the circle of people surrounding the bride could be the guilty party. Each one has their own secrets they don’t want to be revealed. Every time I thought I had it figured out, it appeared all the evidence was pointing to another person. And that happened several times. Once the guilty party was finally revealed, I was still surprised.
The Bridesmaid is an unputdownable thriller that keeps you guessing. It also made me so glad that I never even thought of sending either of my children to a boarding school. This is a book that I didn’t want to put down once I started reading it, but unfortunately, life got in the way, and I had to put it down once in a while.
This book publishes on November 4, 2025, but you are able to go ahead and order your copy of this extremely hard-to-put-down book. If you would like to order your copy in advance, I’ve provided an Amazon link below. I got my pre-publication copy from NetGalley.
Amazon Link: The Bridesmaid
Favorite Sentences:
The dark-haired heiress was poison in a fifty-thousand-dollar bridal dress.
They really did write the book on skeletons in the closet.
A river of ice flows down my spine.
It feels very much like being enclosed in the grip of a praying mantis.
The perfect frosting is gouged in ugly lacerations, exposing naked cake innards in about a hundred wounded fissure.
New Words Learned:
amalgamation – : the action or process of uniting or merging two or more things
bonhomie – good-natured easy friendliness
dado rails – a type of moulding fixed horizontally to the wall around the perimeter of a room.
pash – an infatuation for another person; crush
peplum – a short section attached to the waistline of a blouse, jacket, or dress
rictus – a rigid grin or grimace usually with the mouth open or lips parted
vertiginous – causing or tending to cause dizziness
vulpine – of, relating to, or resembling a fox
About the Author:
Cate Quinn is a former journalist for The Guardian, The Times, and The Mirror alongside many travel and lifestyle magazines. She is also the author of Black Widows and The Clinic. A travel journalist for ten years, Cate has called many countries home, but currently lives in Devon, England, with her beloved partner and two children.
