Emily Saunders returns to Elk Crossing, Ohio to attend her cousin Leanne’s wedding. Doing what she thought was the smart thing at the time; she made reservations at the Elk Crossing Lodge. Since her family is quite large she didn’t want to be crammed into sleeping at someone’s house that was already packed with wedding guests. Little does she know that her stay at the lodge is going to be more than she bargained for in so many ways.
Checking into the lodge, Emily settles in for the evening. In the middle of the night, she is woken by loud screams. Thinking at first that it’s only a bad dream, she orients herself to her surroundings and realizes she’s in her hotel room. Then she hears the loud screams again. While she quickly puts her robe and slippers on, she ventures out of her room to find out what all the commotion is about in the hallway. She reassures herself that thankfully it’s not a fire because nobody seems to be rushing toward the fire exits and she doesn’t hear any alarms blaring to vacate the premises. Instead, she finds two women frantically swatting themselves as if they were trying to get something off of their skin. As she nears the two hysterical women, she finds out that they both are suffering from bedbug bites and one is taking a bad reaction because of it.
Finally heading back to her room and looking closely at her own bed for the little black critters, she’s reassured that she doesn’t find any. Emily decides to take a shower anyway because it’s more a mind over matter thing now that’s floating around in her head. As she’s drying off, she hears a knock on her door. She opens the door to find a sleepy-looking chambermaid and is informed that she must immediately vacate the room, as per the manager, and leave all her belongings behind. She’s offered clean clothes that were left behind by some previous guests and are now in the lost and found bin.
Unfortunately for Emily, this is only the beginning of the mayhem that will happen during her return home to see her family. On top of her also having to surrender her ugly orange bridesmaid dress for laundering, she’s told that once the hotel is given the clearance with the bedbug extermination, her room will no longer be available to her. She’s assigned the last available room, which is in disrepair to say the least, but that will be the last of her problems when she sees a male guest walk right into her room and has key-card access like she does.
Why does the guest have access to this room? Do they get to the bottom of the ordeal and does everything finally return to some semblance of normalcy afterward? Does she get the bridesmaid gown back in time for Leanne’s wedding? What good comes out of this whole debacle for Emily?
This was a fun story in which I laughed at just how many things went wrong for Emily during her stay in Ohio for her cousin’s wedding. Each situation proved to be worse than the last and my heart truly went out to her for what she was going through. There seemed to be only one good thing that came out of this entire situation and to me, it seemed worth all the aggravation she went through. If you would like to know what that good thing turned out to be, you’ve got to buy the book to find out!