A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.
It’s a beautiful day in Newport, Rhode Island, when Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight, alone. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding people, but she’s the only guest at the Cornwall who isn’t here for the big event. Phoebe is here because she’s dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe’s plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.
In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s the Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.
Literary Recognition: Favorite Fiction – Goodreads Choice Awards (2024)
Angela’s Review
This book does not fit neatly into a genre. Is it fiction? Yes. Is it humor? Dark humor and wry humor perhaps. Is it a romance? Not in the traditional sense. There are trigger/content warnings which are quickly revealed in the book, so the reader should be aware of that.
Phoebe Stone has reached a point in her life where she thinks it’s time to end it all. Her marriage of twelve years has crashed with her husband having an affair, leaving, and divorcing her. Her job is not satisfying any longer nor does she feel valued there. The last straw is her elderly cat dying of cancer. Remembering a glossy magazine spread about an inn in Rhode Island, Phoebe makes a reservation, boards a plane with no luggage, and arrives intending to do the deed with the remaining pain pills for Henry the Cat. But on arrival, she realizes she’s in the middle of a blow-out, week-long wedding.
Phoebe is soon sucked into the lives of the wedding people but mainly those of the bride and groom. Lila is rich, privileged and at times very dismissive of anyone standing in the way of her perfect wedding. But Lila and Phoebe develop a connection.
Along the way, Phoebe’s past, her marriage, and her career are revealed to us. Her depression made sense to me. Then she starts learning about the Wedding People and sees the cracks in the facade, the frustration, the unwillingness, or inability to do what needs to be done.
There are some nice Wedding People including the groom and, most of the time, his eleven-year-old daughter. Gary and Phoebe connect and begin to communicate in ways that Phoebe never truly did with her husband. Phoebe loved Matt but Gary gets her. This isn’t Phoebe and Gary’s love story, though. It is Phoebe’s love story with herself. I enjoyed this book and give it 4 stars.