Save the Date

Save the Date is Mary Kay Andrews’s 2014 novel, set in Savannah, Georgia, and built around the kind of romantic comedy plotting that Andrews has been refining across her contemporary southern fiction catalogue. The protagonist is Cara Kryzik, a successful Savannah florist whose business is finally beginning to take off after years of struggling to establish herself. The save the date of the title points to the wedding industry that drives Cara’s business, with her shop specializing in the floral arrangements for the high end Savannah weddings that the city’s tourist trade has made into a significant local industry.

The novel kicks off when Cara loses one of her highest profile wedding accounts under suspicious circumstances and finds her shop’s reputation under threat from rumors that someone has been actively spreading. As Cara investigates what has actually been happening, she crosses paths with Jack Finnerty, a lawyer with his own complicated personal situation whose involvement in the wider drama is initially adversarial. The standard romance plot beats develop across the novel, with the slow recognition that Cara and Jack have more in common than the early antagonism suggested driving the central romance forward.

Mary Kay Andrews handles the situation with her characteristic warmth and humor. The wedding industry setting gives Andrews room to deliver the kind of comic set pieces that her readers love, with bridezillas, demanding mothers of brides, and the various other figures who populate the high end wedding world providing the supporting comedy that keeps the novel moving. The Savannah setting is rendered with affection and specific detail. The southern social codes are handled with knowing precision. And the eventual resolution of both the business mystery and the romance pays off in ways that the slow building setup has earned.

What distinguishes Mary Kay Andrews from a lot of writers in her general territory is the affection she feels for the southern small town and small city settings she works in. Even Savannah, which is not exactly small, is rendered as the kind of place where everyone knows everyone and the social networks shape both the practical realities and the romantic possibilities of the central characters.

For longtime Mary Kay Andrews fans, Save the Date is a comfortable read that delivers what her catalogue promises. For new readers, the novel is a fair introduction to her style. Readers who enjoy Karen White, Patti Callahan, or Adriana Trigiani will find familiar pleasure here.