Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding by Lian Dolan

Abigail and Alexa Save The Wedding by Lian Dolan

288 pages

Published May 2025

My copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Publisher's Summary: 

Penelope and Chase make a lovely couple. She’s a bubbly Southern California girl with killer work ethic. Chase is smart and charming and has political aspirations. They’re planning a spectacular California wedding, wrapped in peonies and thousands of little white lights, soaked in custom cocktails and romantic hashtags. Everyone’s excited about Penny and Chase’s wedding­­­­­­—except their mothers.

The Mother of the Bride, suave Greek-born Alexa Diamandis, doesn’t understand why any woman would get married. Ever! Raised in Athens and now perfectly situated in sun-splashed Montecito, California, she raised Penny as single mother by choice, supported by Lord Simon Fox, her old college friend who just happens to be an English aristocrat, and a wealthy circle of lady friends who call themselves the Merry Widows.

The Mother of the Groom, Abigail Blakeman, is a garden club stalwart firmly planted in coastal Connecticut. She thinks the whole enterprise would be so much easier if the wedding was at their golf club. Especially because the Blakeman’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse—not that you would ever know it by looking at Abigail. Keeping up appearances is exhausting, but it is everything.  

But when a sudden twist of fate calls them into action, these two very different women are forced to take over the wedding planning. Despite their differences, Alexa and Abigail charge in to save the day. How far will two moms go to make their children’s dream wedding a reality?

My Thoughts: 

This is Dolan's sixth novel and I've read them all. Her last, The Marriage Sabbatical, didn't work as well for me as her others, but I never considered that I was done with her writing and I'm glad I didn't. Abigail and Alexa brings Dolan back to what enchanted me with her writing in the first place. Dolan writes with a light touch, even when she's tackling some tougher subjects, her books are focused on her female characters and all of their relationships, and her locations always come alive. 

I love the way Dolan writes relationships between women: mothers and daughters, mothers and other mothers, and especially friend groups. In this book, Alexa, through her work, has earned a place in a friend group called The Widows; these women have formed their own family and will do anything to help family (and have the means to do so!). Abigail doesn't have that kind of friend group. She's spent her life trying to live a very particular kind of life and when finances chased her to the edges of that life, it meant that she had to give up the people she'd always spent time with and now feels friendless. Fortunately, as Abigail becomes more comfortable with who she is now, she also finds she has friends she can depend on when she needs them. And when Chase and Penelope call off the wedding, just as Alexa and Abigail begin to understand each other, they will both need all of their friends and connections to get the couple back together. 

In Abigail and Alexa Save the Wedding, Dolan is back to California and I always feel like I'm getting a tour of the area by a friend who's lived there and loves it. Which is not to say that Connecticut and New York City don't always get their share of attention, but it's the Montecito area that's the star location of this one. 

Perhaps my favorite part of this book were the bridal columns (written by a friend of Abigail's) inserted throughout the book. As a person who is hoping to be a mother of the groom in the coming year, I actually found them to be packed with good information...and also really funny! 

Dolan's books are always the kinds of books that you know will have happy endings and when I pick them up, I pick them up looking forward to that. Characters I can cheer for, some quirkiness, all of the lovely details that make things come alive but never too many, and love (there is always love!) - Dolan never disappoints!