Published: July 30, 2024
Length: 384 pages
Format: Hardcover
Genre: Chick Lit/ Women Fiction

This book deals with infidelity; infertility; unfulfilling job; divorce; suicide; depression; death/grief. Don’t read if any of these is a trigger for you.

Review

Book covers can be so deceiving sometimes. I went into this one thinking I was in for a lightheaded RomCom but this was not it at all and in the very best way.

I loved the colorfully, well developed characters and the astute, sometimes painful, often cleverly funny observations of life, family and relationships. Phoebe, was one of the smartest characters I’ve encountered in a while. I was so touched by the story. I know this book won’t be for everyone, but it was right up my alley. A solid golden 5 stars from me!!

Thanks @librofm for this ALC. Your kindness is always appreciated.

“You can be married and be very alone,” Phoebe says. “More alone than you are when you’re, well, alone. Trust me.“

“Phoebe had been so jealous – but not just of Mia. Her husband felt alive again. She couldn’t even imagine it.“

“But life is strange, always thinking this one thing is going to make you happy, because then you get it, and then maybe you’re not as happy as you imagined you would be, because everyday is still just like everyday. Like the happiness becomes so big, you have no choice but to live inside of it, until you can no longer see it or feel it. And so you start to fixate on something else.“

Blurb

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start.

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 dreamt of coming for years―she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe―which makes it that much more surprising when the women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined―and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.