Book Review: "The Magic Room" by Jeffrey Zaslow

I have a daughter, an adorable girl who will hopefully grow into a stunning woman, and one day her father and I might have to buy her a wedding dress. And when that day comes, I hope my daughter will get to stand on a pedestal in a place like Becker's Bridal, in place like the one Jeffrey Zaslow details in The Magic Room.

I hope that she will be like one of the brides that Zaslow describes, with a lovely or heartbreaking but ultimately interesting story of how she became the woman she will be, peering at the precipice of a new life with her future partner, maybe naïve or maybe wordly, maybe in the first blush of young adulthood or maybe well-established, but definitely hopeful and happy.

I hope that she will be helped by a woman like Shelley Becker Mueller, or her mother, or her grandmother, or her daughter, women who appreciate that every bride and every wedding is precious, and that every woman is perhaps at her most beautiful in her wedding dress, as she beams or weeps or both in the company of the memories of all the brides who have walked the aisle before her, carrying the hopes of all the brides who will come after.

I really enjoyed The Magic Room and have already recommended it to other parents of daughters that I know. My only caveat is that I found the subtitle ("A Story About The Love We Wish For Our Daughters") and the Introduction to be a bit misleading. The opening pages are quite personal and lyrical and almost had me in tears in places, but the rest is much more journalistic and objective. I would have liked a bit more introspection and perspective from the author -- what did he get out of his experience of writing this book, of spending so much time with these women and their families? But all in all, I found this to be a very satisfying read. 

We're reading and discussing The Magic Room at BlogHer Book Club this month -- won't you join us?

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Disclosure: I was provided with a copy of The Magic Room and was compensated for this review, but these opinions are entirely my own.