Matson knocks it out of the park again with a brilliant contemporary novel! I enjoyed every minute of this fun, summer read. The main character was SO relatable, it was almost crazy. Great read!

I have only read one other book by Morgan Matson... and honestly, I am not sure why only one. I loved it. I have been wanting to read more but I have not gotten around to it. Well, good ol' Ash signed me up for this tour because she knew I was dying to read this book. Which I really was, so I was happy she did this deed. This book was so so so so good. I loved it from page one to page done. It was funny, cute, emotional, crazy, and so much more. It was a blast to read it and I know now I will for sure read the rest of the books from this author.



Charlie Grant comes from one big crazy family. Five kids and she is the youngest. She is not graduated and ready to move on with her life... except she doesn't quite know how to commit to moving. Her older sister does know how to commit and she is having a wedding... in the backyard at her childhood house, which her parents are selling.

Charlie is so excited to have all her siblings back together again. This will be exciting and should be perfect... well expect she has a brother who will not speak to their mother, another brother who brought a surprise wedding guest, an ex-hookup lurking around, and a cute wedding planner assistant that is trying to keep this wedding from crashing.

So safe to say that everything that can go wrong does go wrong including family drama that Charlie was not expecting nor wanting and now nothing seems to be perfect or even doable.


So this book was just amazing. I am not a big reader of contemporary romance but I felt this was a bit more chick-lit than romance. Romance is in the air for sure but it's not the center or the focus of the book. That would be Charlie and her family, friends, future decisions. Charlie has so much going on and this is the story how she navigated through the few days of ultimate craziness. She has to learn to live, love, forgive, say goodbye, look forward, and basically carry on.

I loved Charlie... actually I loved all the characters but Charlie was by far the star and she was just so fun to watch as she figures out how to save the wedding that seems to be falling apart at every seam. Everything that can go wrong does go wrong. What I loved about Charlie... she had a lot going on in her head and the only thing she really wanted to do was fix the wedding because she wanted her sister to have the perfect day. Charlie thought the world of family, very strong family morals.

Charlie was the star but there were so many characters that were fun and adorable in this book. It would take a while to talk about each and every one but just know that each one had a very strong individual voice and together they made the perfect cast. There was only one I wasn't particularly keen on... he was sort of jerk disguised in coolness and sugar. But he was an important part of the story and even though he was a jerk, he wasn't a jerk... so I even liked him. I shall not name him since there were two main boys in Charlie's lives...but one of the boys...not the best for Charlie...the other one though... Sweet and adorkable and pretty smart and resourceful. Loved him.

There are two boys... but not a love triangle. Really not love at all just a lot of like. So don't let the two boy thing scare you away. Also, like I said earlier, light on the romance heave on the family and friends.

This book dealt with some deeper issues... not too deep but there were some issues like family problems, boy trouble, friend fights, and learning to fly away. So nothing too tough but still there was depth to this book. The issues were dealt with well and even though there were some emotional times, the book was light and fun for the most part. So funny. Many times I was laughing out loud. So so funny.

I would seriously recommend this book to everyone and anyone. Its a great read for those that haven't really reached out to contemporary or those that love contemporary. It's a book for everyone. Seriously go and read it... I think you will love it!



LOVED IT SO SO SO MUCH!!!!!

3.75/5

It was all about a wedding which is my jam so I loved reading behind the scenes of one. I also enjoyed how it mostly centered around the Grant family & the complexity of the relationships between them all.
🍰 🐶
I’m not going to lie, this book annoyed me at times. Mostly the situations in it really. Almost every situation if something could go wrong, it did...big time. It often reminded me of some movies where crazy situations keep happening which give me such bad anxiety honestly. 🍰
Overall I did really enjoy this book and would say it’s a great summer read. It’s long but fast to fly through and you will fall in love with the Grant family & Waffles The dog of course!

4.5 stars

Wow, I really enjoyed reading this one!

I’ve read one of Matson’s other works–The Unexpected Everything–but I did find it to be a bit long and dragging.

Thankfully, the issues that The Unexpected Everything had were completely patched up in Save the Date but kept the parts that make all of Matson’s books really enjoyable, which made this book so much more great.

I mean, first of all, the book has that Matson-eque chaos. It takes place over only a couple of days, and there’s a bunch of chaos over wedding stuff and family problems and cartoon issues and Good Morning America (say what?!).

There’s so many things going on, but Matson manages and balances it all very well. I think by book 5, Matson has really gotten the hang of tying a contemporary together by the end. I felt like we got an adequate amount of closure from this book, and this is something that contemporaries usually lack.

I do think that it kept a pretty good pace and didn’t drag as much as The Unexpected Everything, but it was still a little long. For something that takes place over only a couple of days, over four hundred pages was longer than I think was needed, but it’s forgivable to me.

This was honestly the only real downside I found to this book, and if you’re familiar with Matson’s work, you know that her writing, as long as it may be, can feel like it speeds by in a snap.

I ended up binging this whole book in one morning, from breakfast to before I started lunch, and have absolutely no regrets. The family relationships within this book were all so precious, and I really love how hashed out they were. I think the best thing Matson did in this book was create these family relationships and hurdles that Charlie had to work through in only one weekend, and I feel like she really managed to learn a lot about herself in this time period.

There’s also a lot of good friendship themes, though it felt like family still took up the forefront. And guess what? The romance is sooo tiny. Here’s what I think a break-up of this book’s themes would be:

Family (45%) + Charlie’s Personal Growth (44%) + Friendship (10%) + Romance (1%) = Save the Date

It was really awesome to see Matson step back from the more romantic side of things, although the romance was definitely teasing enough to make you want something to happen.

I definitely was in love with Charlie’s whole family, and the way Matson tied in the comic that Charlie’s mom writes–Grant Central Station–was really nice in highlighting the family dynamics as well as contributing to the chaos.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading this one and I think Matson did a fantastic job with this! It was very satisfying to read, and a really great summer sort of read. If you like fun, semi-chaotic contemporaries feat. weddings and all sorts of things going wrong, I totally recommend you check out Save the Date!

Even though the first few pages of Save the Date seems like it is going to be a full blown romance with a wedding as the backdrop, it is really a book about family and how things are never how you think they will be. Yes, it is a wedding weekend filled with fiascos, but that is really just a vehicle for so much more.

The youngest, Charlie Grant, is craving some time with all of siblings under one roof, and her older sister's wedding is the perfect opportunity.

The Grant family is so relatable, so much so that their mother has created a mainstream comic strip based on her family-Grant Central Station. While we only spend a few days with the family, you quickly become wrapped up in their relationships with each other.

It's a fun read (while being stressful at the same time with all of the wedding mishaps) that feels a lot shorter than its 400 pages!

Charlie Grant is focusing on finishing high school, choosing which college she will attend and enjoying her sister’s wedding. It has been years since all of her siblings have been home at the same time and Charlie is hopeful that they will fill the house with fun and laughter. But life usually doesn’t go as planned and Charlie’s weekend is shaping up to be full of obstacles. The wedding planner cancels last minute, a dog is dropped off without any notice, their house alarm keeps going off and their neighbor wants to get back at her father for having a better garden. Let’s not even talk about the relatives! What will Charlie have to deal with to help her sister have the perfect wedding?

Save the Date is a stand-alone romantic comedy that will have readers laughing out loud throughout. As the pages progressed I kept wondering what would happen next to this young girl. If this was my wedding (or my daughter’s), I probably would have cut my losses and eloped, yet Charlie kept persevering and hides most of the turmoil from her sister for her big day. Matson has created a wonderful story that I will be excited to recommend to my students and review readers. Save the Date is a definite read if you like a good rom-com!

How do I even begin to review a book that I loved reading so much? One that has surely made its way into my top five favorite books of all time? How do I put into words how utterly fantastic a book is? That is the problem I’m having as I sit here trying to type up this review explaining exactly why Save the Date should be moved to the top of your summer to-be-read list.

Save the Date takes place over three days—the weekend of Charlie’s sister’s wedding. Charlie is the youngest of five and the only one left in the house. Her three oldest siblings are in their mid-to-late twenties, and the brother closest to her in age is in his second year of college (and hasn’t been home in over a year). Their tight-knit family is the stuff legends are made of, a legend that the world knows about thanks to their mom’s comic strip panel that followed their family as the siblings grew up. However, their whole family has not been together in a long time, and Charlie absolutely cannot wait until all of her siblings are back in their childhood home for one last hurrah before Linnie gets married and their parents sell the house. Things do not go exactly as Charie had planned, though, and disaster upon disaster keeps hitting the wedding—such as a stolen suit, a destroyed cake, and a power outage.

I absolutely adored the family dynamic. This is a big cast, and I loved the way how each of the family members played off of each other and had their own personalities. It was so much fun seeing the different relationships between the siblings and how they played with and teased one another. I would jump at the chance to read hundreds of more stories about this fictional family.

Although the wedding disasters were hilarious, the main focus of the book is on Charlie as she realizes that everything isn’t quite as perfect as she thought it to be. Honestly, I related to her so much as she deals with this “end of an era” and how she doesn’t necessarily want to move forward yet. She doesn’t want change, but throughout the story, she learns that she needs it. She starts to see that maybe, just maybe, she’s been living too much in the past and within the memories of her family’s fictional comic strip. She starts to see that the brother she idolized isn’t faultless, that she doesn’t actually know anything about her longtime crush, and that her family isn’t as solid as might have believed.

Based on the blurb and previous Morgan Matson books I read, I was expecting there to be more romance in the story. However, the romance was a very small point in the novel, and I was glad for it. Even though I love romance, I loved that the focus was almost solely on Charlie and her family. Bill, the wedding coordinator’s nephew, is pretty cute though, and I was happy with his part in the epilogue at the end.

Overall, Morgan Matson has done it again and written another hit. Save the Date is one of my new favorite books, and a summer must-read! Readers will fall in love with the Grant family (and with the comics featured in the book)!

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Words cannot adequately convey how much I LOVED this book. I consider Morgan Matson one of my favorite authors, so of course I was excited for a new release from her. However, when I first read the premise, I definitely felt underwhelmed. I WAS WRONG. Save the Date was such an unexpected delight.

We follow our main character Charlie over the weekend of her older sister, Linnie’s, wedding. Charlie comes from a big family (she has four siblings who greatly range in age, and is gaining a brother-in-law, too), and it’s a rare occasion when all of them are in the same place at the same time. The family dynamics were hands-down my favorite part of this book. Though I don’t come from as big a family as Charlie’s, I have two older (step, but I don’t think of them that way) brothers who are 15 and 17 years older than me. Charlie’s relationship with her older brothers reminded me SO much of my relationship with mine. Charlie’s experience with being the youngest by a significant margin, with all the benefits and the frustrations of that role, also was so relatable. The overall vibe when the whole Grant family was together, with all the different personalities and the years of inside jokes, was so familiar and so fun to read. Each of the Grant siblings is so different, but I ADORE them all. Seriously.

Of course, we have the wedding plot playing out over all the relationship dynamics. This book totally read like a romantic comedy film, complete with disasters and moments of comic relief and no shortage of hijinks. The wedding plot is overdone in media, but I still think Save the Date put a fun spin on it. Now that my friends are starting to get married and I’m attending and being part of more weddings, I loved reading this story even more. It’s ridiculous and over-the-top, but it’s one of those disasters you can’t take your eyes off. It was really fun to watch this story unfold.

As far as romance… this book really has very little of it. The main focus is definitely family, and romance played a very minor role in the story. It actually concludes with a bit of an open ending, which I loved. I always love the romances in Morgan Matson’s books (speaking of, we get a cameo of Andi and Clark from The Unexpected Everything, which was adorable!), but Save the Date proves that her stories stand alone without huge romance plots, too.

I’m not doing a great job of articulating my thoughts, but Save the Date is one of the best contemporaries I’ve read in quite a while. It’s full of heart, humor, and honesty. This is a must-read for anyone who’s close with their family! Fans of Morgan Matson and people who are new to her writing alike will enjoy this gem of a book.

This is a darling contemporary teen romance, written in the heartwarming, humorous way that only Morgan Matson does! I would recommend this book for high school age and above readers. You will fall in love with the hilarious family in this cute wedding-disaster story.

A lovely YA contemp! Probably one of my least favorite of Matson's, but it was still really good! The shenanigans were interesting, but at times were a little much. I felt myself getting pretty stressed out when reading this.

I loved that the focus was on the family, rather than romance. Charlie might be my favorite protagonist of Morgan Matson's books, and I loved how she dealt with the changes in her family.

4.5 Stars! Full review to come.

A cute, funny YA read. At times, I was laughing out loud at Charlie and her family. I would definitely recommend this book for high schoolers looking for a fun, quick read.

I really do love books which put a family and its dynamics at the forefront, I have to admit I didn’t realise that this would be the case with going into Save the Date, I knew it was a Morgan Matson book and that I had to read it. But it was a lovely surprise, as Matson really made this family for me, yes, the Grant’s like any other family, didn’t come without the ups and downs, but I loved how despite the size of the family (8 if you include the son in law to be Rodney), I came to adore each member in their own way. With the Grant’s it could be hard to get your voice in edgeways, with everyone being such big individual’s, but Matson was able to give each family member their own personality and voice that made them stand out from the rest, but also took the time out for you to get to know each character too which I greatly appreciated.

With so many quirky personalities, it was hard for me to choose a favourite character, as I said before I adored them all, but Charlie was a great MC, she was the only Grant sibling still living at home, and so was still figuring things out. I liked how through Charlie, we were able to experience this big anticipation of her family all being reunited together, it had been a long time coming. I liked how we were told there were some unresolved family issues but weren’t give insights into what exactly had gone down to bring this about, the way Matson decided to reveal this over the course of the story I appreciated, as it had me constantly guessing about what could have gone down to cause this rift in the first place.

Save the Date in my opinion had everything going for it, amongst the family antics, there were the unresolved mysteries, heated gardening competitions and of course so much upheaval at Charlie’s sister’s wedding, that I had my doubts that she would even get married. But the Grant’s came through once again and went to show they could withstand almost anything. The Grant family thoroughly reminded me of the Baker family in Cheaper by the Dozen, they always had something going on, nonetheless, the Grant’s made this book a truly epic one!

I loved this book! The writing felt so natural and just pulled me right into the story. I really felt like I was reading the perfect version of a romcom/family comedy movie. I don't have a family this size, but the sibling relationships and the feeling of rightness in certain settings with your family was so spot on. I was laughing throughout a lot of the book and shaking my head in loving disbelief when everything that could go wrong did go wrong. The characters were very relatable and genuine. Every character had his/her own story and personality, much like real people. The pacing of the book was perfect; despite taking place over the course of a weekend, the storyline never dragged on or felt too fast. The romance involved wasn't rushed or cheesy, and I actually liked the note it ended on. Save the Date was a very enjoyable read and I am definitely adding more Morgan Matson to my TBR list!

Charlie (Charlotte) Grant lives in Stanwich, Connecticut with her family. The Grant family and their home are famous because Mrs. Grant writes a nationally popular comic strip about them and their lives. As the story opens, the Grants are gearing up for a busy weekend because Linnie is marrying her college sweetheart Rodney. Once the wedding is over, they also have to do an interview for Good Morning America because the comic strip is ending. What follows is the wildest weekend the Grants have ever experienced. Mishaps abound, mistakes are made, secrets are revealed, and when the weekend is over the Grants will have to pick up the pieces of their past and decide what to do with their future.
I absolutely loved this book! It made me laugh out loud the whole time I read it. The characters and the situations came alive for me because the writing was so descriptive. Sometimes I even felt stressed out as I read because everything seemed so real. The story is written from Charlie's perspective, which works well because she is the youngest child and also ends up averting disasters with Bill, the wedding planner's nephew. I really liked Bill (so much better than Charlie's crush Jesse, who was disgustingly selfish and arrogant). I was sad at the end because of something that happens, but I also thought it ended well. I highly recommend this book to those who enjoy contemporary YA fiction.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher through NetGalley. A positive review was not required, and all opinions expressed are entirely my own.

I really thought this was a wonderful book! Morgan Maston is one of my must read authors and she did not disappoint. I really enjoyed Charlie, the main character. I loved all of the family dynamics and the family interactions. They were certainly entertaining. If you love books about families and weddings this is definitely a book to read!

This book was adorable. I felt like it was a YA version of Meet the Parents - everything that could go wrong did. Based on the description and previous books by Manson, I did expect more romance. This novel ended up being more about her family and their relationships than a boy. I would say read this novel with that expectation and you won't be disappointed!

Another win for Morgan Matson! Fantastic, charming story. The characters are honest and real, which is what MM is best at.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for sending me a digital ARC of “Save the Date” by Morgan Matson. This is one adorable novel. It is sweet and very funny. Young readers who enjoy a fun and girly story will be very pleased with this story. The characters are very real. Especially the main character. I immediately connected with her and remembered pieces of my teen years through her story. This is such a fun read!

Thank you so much for approving me for this ARC! I'm apart of Fantastic Flying Book Club's blog tour for Save the Date, so my review won't be posted online until June 8th (my tour stop date).

My review:

When I came across Save the Date on Goodreads, I immediately knew I wanted to read it, because it gave me major Sixteen Candles (one of my favorite teen movies) vibes. And guess what, my suspicion was correct! Like Sixteen Candles, there were a lot of hilariously disastrous events that took place before, during, and after the wedding, but like, times 3.

Charlie is going through an emotionally tough time because she doesn't like change, and a lot of changes are quickly approaching. She has big decisions she needs to make, but keeps putting them off.  I didn't like Charlie for most of the book, because she was often immature, selfish, and sometimes, inconsiderate. She kept envisioning this perfect weekend with her “perfect” family, and when things started getting in the way of her plans, she angrily lashed out at her family and best friend. However, I did love following her around as she frequently and frantically tried to stop her older sister's wedding from completely falling apart.

Charlie’s mom is a famous author/artist of Grant Central Station, a widely known, and beloved comic strip that is based on her big, wacky family. Throughout Save the Date, we're treated to actual Grant Central Station comic strips. I loved each and every one!

There were so many things to love about Save the Date, the awesome 80s movie and music references, the hilarious wedding snafus, and especially, the entire Grant family, and their interactions with one another. No Grant faded into the background, because they all had their own memorable personalities and moments.

Save the Date is a charming and fun contemporary that made me smile and laugh-out-loud a lot. I know I'll reread it sometime down the road.

This is the first Matson book I've read, and I was pleasantly surprised! Matson did a wonderful job of making it cute and heartfelt. Definitely a fan.