Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout, Speechless

Speechless

Yvonne Collins and Sandy Rideout

Red Dress, Feb 2004, $12.95, 320 pp.

ISBN: 0373250495

In Toronto Libby McIssac is legendary for catching bridal bouquets having caught twelve over the past two decades starting when she was eight. Libby knows she has a tall advantage being six foot five in three inch heels, but even when she does not try she makes the play as every wedding she has attended she has caught the bouquet.

Libby obtains a job at the Ministry of Recreations as a political speechwriter for Minster Clarice Cleary. However, the job stinks as her immediate boss and the Minister barely acknowledge that she breaths and blithely informs her that they will let her know when she can think for herself. The positives are Tim Kennedy, who she met at a wedding when she easily caught the bridal bouquet, and a male friend willing to end the bouquet curse. On the other hand a scandal shakes up the Ministry and people like Libby are considered mass sacrifice fodder.

Even though the heroine's angst is bigger than her basketball physique and can become disruptive, Libby still makes this chick lit pleasurable through her often amusing perspective of the worlds of dating even much shorter males, weddings and politics. The story line is for the most part humorous, but also has a serious undertone involving workplace culpability (the buck stops below management). Readers will enjoy Libby's lament just don't try to crash the boards against her.

Harriet Klausner