Best Wedding Gift Ever…Or is it?

About Book: 17 year old Leeann Worthier is the perfect girl in town - or so she says. George Willets is the heir to a booming petroleum business. When they announce their engagement, George's controlling mother is unimpressed, and Leeann absolutely refuses to live with her mother-in-law. So George gives his new wife a house as a wedding gift - a house haunted by the family's most violent ghost.

About Author: Kathleen Mckenna is a transplanted Alaskan who spent twelve years on her first paragraph and now lives and writes prolifically in the opposite kind of desert in New Mexico. 

She has written eight novels to date and recently nearly lost all eight when her laptop and her back-up drive failed simultaneously. At the last count, seven had been recovered.

'The Wedding Gift' is Kathleen's third novel, the first of a supernatural trilogy. The second in the series, 'The Comeback', will be published by Night Publishing in late 2010.

My Thoughts:

First I have to say, I wish I received a mansion for my wedding gift for FREE :-).

However, nothing in life is ‘free’ is it?

The Wedding Gift is a story of a young girl who marries into a wealthy family, receives a mansion as her wedding gift from her groom’s father, but, well, some gifts are not made to be cherished. Throughout the story, I asked myself many times if 17 year old Leeann Worthier who marries 26 year old, filthy rich George Willet, is truly a gold digger, a gold digger by circumstance or as her best friend says, dumber than a box of hair.

Leeann, who is said to be the most beautiful female in all of Dalton, maybe even Oklahoma, was courted by the only son of the wealthiest family in Oklahoma. She ends up pregnant and George being a ‘gentleman’ and in love with Leeann, decides he will be responsible and marry her the week after she graduates high school. Leeann of course is swept up by the things that George has bought her and the promise of the things he will buy her. For their wedding gift, they are given the title to the family owned mansion, Willet House. Isn’t that just the grandest gift ever? Well, not so much. Willet House is haunted and has been the town haunted house since the mid 70’s when George’s uncle and his family (wife and five children) were murdered there; supposedly, by the wife. Guess who she decides to show herself to, yes Leeann. Did she or did she not kill her children? Why is she still in the house? It all unravels when George turns up dead and Leeann is the accused.

I don’t necessarily believe in ghosts, but the story was written with such vivid descriptions that I could see, hear and smell everything the author described. Kathleen McKenna has written a great ghost story that captures the readers and places them in the town of Dalton where everything is happening.

After reading the story, the answer has become more clear to me whether Leeann was a true gold digger, a gold digger by circumstance or dumber than a box of hair. Thing is, she doesn’t have a lot to fall back on besides being the most beautiful girl in Dalton, maybe even Oklahoma, so it was easy to fall for a lavish lifestyle. And for those of us who loves a hero at the end, there is one and again, the description is so vivid, I want to look into those beautiful green eyes…:-)

I give this story: 

DISCLAIMER: I was in no way compensated to review this book. These are my opinions of a book in which I was given by Night Publishing.