Stevie‘s review of The Whispering Dress Boutique by Louisa Leaman
Contemporary Women’s Fiction published by Sourcebooks Landmark 05 May 20
Women’s fiction centred around a particular specialist shop – the quirkier and more specific the better – generally works very well for me. As well as learning about the ins and outs of the type of goods on sale, and following the adventures of the proprietor and staff, we also get to meet a wide cross-section of the customers, who tend to be as eccentric as the former category of characters, and as individual as the goods on sale. Having said all that, I find that I prefer this book’s UK title of The Perfect Dress to the more genre-explanatory US one of The Whispering Dress Boutique, although that is the name of the business around which much of the plot takes place.
Vintage clothing aficionado and self-styled ‘wedding dress whisperer’ Francesca Delaney prides herself on matching every bride who visits her shop with their perfect dress, even when it is nothing like the outfit they had imagined themselves getting married in. Having picked herself up from the ruins of her own almost-wedding – at which she wore a most unsuitable dress and was jilted at the altar – with the help of her best friend Mick, who also has his own distinctive style of dressing, Francesca has no interest in romance for herself, but instead revels in the romantic dreams of others. All that begins to change when she and Mick attend a house clearance in Epping Forest, where Francesca finds a very rare designer wedding dress stuffed into an old case and through it finds herself involved in the life of its previous owner’s son.
Rafael Colt survived an unhappy childhood and is now the public face of the philanthropic foundation established by his grandfather. With the sale of his mother’s possessions and then the house in which she lived so many years in seclusion, he hopes to turn his back on the past altogether. So he is less than happy when one of the antique dealers attending his house clearance starts asking him questions about his mother’s wedding dress, which he thought had been thrown away years ago. Rafael has no answers for Francesca – his mother stopped speaking soon after her wedding, and he never once heard her voice – and the dress almost ends up being carted away in a skip.
When Francesca returns later to retrieve the dress from the skip, she finds herself embroiled even deeper in Colt family secrets, when she encounters Rafael’s sister. Still entranced by the dress, even though she now knows that the last bride to wear it didn’t achieve her happy ever after, Francesca sets out to find out more about both the dress and Rafael. Her obsession with the dress, not to mention the looming spectre of her past relationship failure, threaten to ruin any chance the pair have of finding happiness together, especially after Francesca’s meeting with the son of one of the designers who produced the dress – originally for Rafael’s grandmother – and more uncomfortable Colt family secrets are revealed.
Eventually, Francesca decides to follow through on a challenge Rafael set her early in their relationship: to track down the three customers who had most recently invited her to their weddings and discover whether their marriages have lasted. What Francesca learns teaches her a valuable lesson about the real power of finding the perfect dress, and gives her the impetus to send her ‘perfect dress’ onwards to its rightful home.
I found a lot to like in this book. The shop’s clients and their dresses were lovingly described, as were Francesca and Mick’s fashion choices. I found Rafael and his sister annoying at times, but I loved the slow reveal of the stories behind various of the dresses that Francesca bought and sold. I’ll be looking out for more from this author.
Grade: B
Summary:
The right dress can transform your life….
Francesca Delaney has a knack for matching a bride-to-be with the perfect gown. Her shop, The Whispering Dress, is no ordinary bridal boutique. Every gown is vintage, and the dresses seem to share their stories with Francesca, pointing to which woman needs them next.
Fran credits her success to two rules: never covet a dress and never sell a dress that led to a doomed marriage. But then she finds a beautiful 1950s couture floor-length gown, and her talent veers into obsession. The owner, however, would quite like the dark past of the dress to remain hidden forever…
No excerpt available.
