I found The Wedding Gift a few weeks ago while looking for book needed to read for PBD. The description sounded great.

Leann wasn’t good enough for her uppercrust in-laws, so they gave her the mansion none of them wanted. Years ago, something or someone in the house killed Leann’s brother. Will its violent secrets kill her, next?

” . . . a spine-electrifying supernatural tale where a huge Southern States mansion contains one of the most terrifying, violent and indeed psychopathic ghosts to haunt any town. It is also a murder mystery-why did Robina Willets apparently kill all five of her young children, and her husband, before stabbing herself to death? And, if you are in the camp of believing that ‘Justice . . . just is not,’ then this will have you frothing at the mouth with righteous social fury.”-Tim Roux, author of Missio and The Dance of the Pheasodile.

It was right up my alley… it had a haunted house and everything. It was too good to be true. I didn’t get that far. I only got to Chapter three and that was a struggle. The main character Leann was the narrator, and she was self-absorbed. It annoyed me to the point that I couldn’t read further. In fact the more I read the more I really didn’t like the girl. The part I did enjoy happened to be the beginning were Leann really didn’t have any part in. It was news articles about what happened in the house and Leann’s wedding announcement. Everything else I read of The Wedding Gift was written as Leann’s personal journal.

Leann is a young woman who’s about to marry into a wealth family in her small Oklahoma, town. She’s won all the beauty pageants she’s ever been in but “she’s retired because she’s getting married” or she’d try for Miss Oklahoma and Miss USA. More than half of the journal is about how pretty she is. And trust me I understand journals are supposed to be about one’s self but for a book it was a little much. At one point Leann actually say she doesn’t have much of an education because she’s so pretty she didn’t need to study. “No one made her study.” It floored me.

The worst part is, that I grew up in Texas and while we make fun of Oklahoma all the time this premise and voice didn’t ring true for me. I have friends that actually went to school there and they are educated. Giving a person a “Redneck Hick” mentality shouldn’t be directed toward a town or state and that was a direction it seemed to take along with pretty women being uneducated.