Always the Designer, Never the Bride, Emma Rae Creation Series #3

Sandra D. Bricker was an entertainment publicist in Los Angeles for more than 15 years, where she attended school to learn screenwriting and eventually taught the craft for several semesters. She became a best-selling, award-winning author of Live-Out-Loud Fiction for the inspirational market, authored books such as the Jessie Stanton novels, and was best known for her Emma Rae Creation series. Over the years, as an ovarian cancer survivor, she spent time and effort toward raising awareness and funds for research, diagnostics, and a cure. Sandra lived in Toledo, Ohio before her passing in 2016. She is remembered online at SandraDBricker.com.

The third book in the Emma Rae Creation series, Always the Designer Never the Bride, provides a well written, refreshing romance that manages to skip some of the over used cliches found in Christian romance. It also includes cute advice for brides and recipes for sweets between each chapter. While it remains a romance in its truest form, Sandra D. Bricker's book is fresh in that it isn't overly Christian and in that its character chemistry is realistic and doesn't unravel too quickly. While the concept may remind readers of movies like The Wedding Planner, the plot of Always the Designer Never the Bride finds its own unique road to take readers down.

Audrey Regan's wedding dress design career seems to be going down the drain. She doesn't like the city she lives in, and the only clients she can seem to hold onto are her friends. But when she goes home to Atlanta to help with her best friend Carly's wedding dress and the stress begins to build, a new line of opportunities come her way, including the opportunity to fall in love with a fun loving man with a tattoo and a motorcycle. What starts off as a much needed, random night on the town turns into a developing, complicated romance between the two. But Audrey isn't sure if she's ready for a relationship, and J.R. lives most of his life on the road. How can their two lifestyles become compatible enough for a lasting relationship? Especially when everyone around them seems to be coupling up?

Readers of the modern economy will relate to Audrey's struggle to pay bills and stay in business, and Christians will find comfort in the Lord’s providence for this lovable character. This story lacks true moral conviction, however. It focuses on making character believable, rather than making them strong Christians who recall Scripture every time trouble comes along. While Audrey's friends are made out as genuine Christians a few times throughout the book (using instances of prayer and such), Bricker does not make it clear whether or not Audrey is a Christian. Audrey refers to the Bible in her hotel room at one point, reading Isaiah 44:11, which says, "O, you afflicted one, tossed with tempest, and not comforted. Behold, I will lay your stones with colorful gems, and lay your foundations with sapphires." Audrey says a quick prayer based on the verse and its encouragement, but is later embarrassed to mention it to her friends, and when things start to look up for her, she doesn’t credit her happiness to God.

The lack of preaching does not inhibit the story, though. Bricker gives the reader a great, relatable, well paced story that any fiction reader is bound to enjoy. Harmony Wheeler, www.ChristianBookPreviews.com