The Wedding Crasher by Nikki Stern

I met author Nikki Stern at the IBPA.org booth during the American Library Association Conference. She was signing her book, The Wedding Crasher. Ditch Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn. This book is not to be confused with the movie about two guys who crash weddings for free booze and to hook up with women. In Stern’s The Wedding Crasher we’re dealing with a serial killer of brides-to-be.

Here is the book description as borrowed from Amazon:

A dead brunette dressed like a bride shows up in Pickett County, Tennessee, the latest victim of an elusive killer known as the Wedding Crasher. Sam Tate is Pickett County’s poker-playing, yoga-loving new sheriff, a woman with a troubled past and an uncertain future. Even as she tracks the predator, she wonders: Who can she trust? Why is she a target? Can she stop more people from dying on her watch?

My Review

I stream a lot of mystery shows and series. I love them. I don’t read as many as I like because 1) I can watch and experience shows with my partner at night, but I can’t read with him, and 2) Most of my days are spent writing (including a cozy mystery), which is very time-consuming and so I have little time to read. But with a vacation to Scandinavia planned, I was looking forward to reading a handful of books. The Wedding Crasher was one of them.

I wasn’t disappointed. Nikki Stern is a strong writer. This story is written from multiple points of view (or is it point of views?) and effectively so. Furthermore, the readers not only get to try to anticipate and identify the killer of women heading to the altar, but they also get to piece together the main character’s puzzling childhood memory. I am hopeful this is the first book in a series because I want more of Sheriff Samantha Tate.

About Nikki Stern

Nikki is the author of four books, including HOPE IN SMALL DOSES, which was both an Eric Hoffer medal finalist and a BookList book of the week, and THE FORMER ASSASSIN, a suspense thriller and Kindle Review category finalist for 2018. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, USA Today, Newsweek, and Humanist Magazine, as well as three anthologies. Nikki co-authored the interactive murder mystery musicals that make up the Café Noir series, published by Samuel French. She belongs to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA).