Celebrating Friendship And Love

The Morning After The Wedding Before by Laura Ziepe is a contemporary novel that celebrates friendship and explores relationships and family.

The novel discusses the effect that social media has on lives. “Having the perfect social media account doesn’t mean a thing in real life.” Images projected on social media never show the real picture, they merely show the edited highlights and the best bits. There is much pressure to live up to these false images.

Sometimes life goes so fast that we find ourselves swept into situations we really do not want to be in. We all need good friends who will watch our backs and rescue us from ourselves. We need good friends who see through our ‘worldly’ face and can see us slowly unraveling. The novel explores the faces we show the world in contrast to the ‘real’ us.

Life behind closed doors may be far from rosy. Within the novel there is a toxic relationship. The reader sees how a character is manipulated. It is domestic abuse in the form of mind games resulting in low self-esteem and an apologetic nature as a personality is crushed. The reader longs for the victim to break free.

Motherhood is important. It is back breaking and tiring and can be very lonely but it is the best job in the world and we are rewarded with love.

Lifelong friends bounce dialogue off each other. There is a beautiful love and camaraderie.

I enjoyed The Morning After The Wedding Before. It was a fun, light-hearted read but there were also some serious themes. Laura Ziepe is a new author to me and I look forward to reading more by her.

I received this book for free. A favourable review was not required and all views expressed are my own.

JULIA WILSON