Four Weddings and a Sixpence: An Anthology
by Julia Quinn, Stefanie Sloane, Elizabeth Boyle, and Laura Lee Guhrke
Synopsis:
Beloved authors Julia Quinn, Elizabeth Boyle, Laura Lee Guhrke, and Stefanie Sloane deliver the stories of four friends from Madame Rochambeaux’s Gentle School for Girls who find an old sixpence in their bedchamber and decide that it will be the lucky coin for each of their weddings…
“Something Old”
Julia Quinn’s prologue introduces her heroine Beatrice Heywood and the premise for Four Weddings and a Sixpence.
“Something New”
In Stefanie Sloane’s unforgettable story, an ever-vigilant guardian decrees that Anne Brabourne must marry by her twenty-first birthday. But love finds her in the most unexpected of ways.
“Something Borrowed”
Elizabeth Boyle tells the tale of Cordelia Padley, who has invented a betrothed to keep her family from pestering her to wed. Now she’ll need to borrow one to convince them she’s found her true love.
“Something Blue”
In Laura Lee Guhrke’s story, unlucky Lady Elinor Daventry has her sixpence stolen from her and must convince the rake who pilfered the coin to return it in time for her own wedding.
“… and a Sixpence in Her Shoe”
Julia Quinn finishes with the story of Beatrice Heywood, who never believed that the sixpence was anything but a tarnished old coin—until it led all of her friends to true love. But her faith in the coin is tested when it keeps sending her to the wrong man!
Review:
What a cute idea! Anthologies are usually fun, but when the stories are interconnected like in this one? And by some of my favorite authors? Even better!
Four boarding school friends find an old sixpence in an unusual place and decide that it must be their lucky coin, destined to help all of them find husbands. Ten years later, none of the women fully believe in its “powers”, but neither are they willing to completely chuck the idea. Four stories follow, each getting its name from part of the “Something old, something new…” wedding superstition.
There wasn’t a bad story in the bunch! The first (Anne’s–a rake befriends her, says he’ll find her a husband before her required 21st birthday but then they accidentally fall for each other) and last stories (Bea’s, whose tendency to keep her eyes on the sky led her to a man who would fulfill her every wish) were definitely my favorites. The two in the middle were fun to read as well, though Cordelia’s relationship problem seemed to be fixed just a teensy bit easily and Ellie’s story had an awful lot going on in it, including some pretty dramatic 180-degree turns on the part of the heroine–altogther, though, the four got my 2017 reading off to an entertaining start.
Rating: 4 1/2 stars / A-
I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy of this book.
