Title: The Wedding People
Author: Alison Espach
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co. 2024
Genre: Contemporary Fiction
Pages: 384
Rating: 2/5 stars
Reading Challenges: Unread Shelf; Read Around the US - Rhode Island
Where I Got It: Book of the Month
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 actually 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.
Oof! Terrible people being terrible to each other. I really do not like reading books where people just stumble around low key being terrible to everyone around them. I understand Phoebe’s initial state of mind and the choices she makes. What I do not get is the rest of the book. No way that she radically changes her mind that quickly without true intervention. I did not find this book funny or tender. I really need to stay away from these types of contemporary fiction books.
Next up on the TBR pile:
