Strangers and Cousins

I went into this book with high expectations for a humorous, easy summer read, but it didn't really impress me. The humor was pretty scant and while the plot sounded hilarious (it's built around an upcoming wedding at the central family's ancestral home), it was actually closer to homey. In places, the author really excelled at evoking nostalgia and at others those attempts elicited nothing more than a shrug or an eye-roll from me. At its best, I felt like I was back with the Weasleys at the Burrow; there's just something about large families in ramshackle country houses that is extremely appealing to me. In that sense, this book WAS a great summer read, but the good was counterbalanced by a mediocre story.