REVIEW: The Wedding People by Alison Espach

 

OUR REVIEW:

I have no idea how I came across The Wedding People but I found it or it found me and so with the thanks of the Libby app, I got to see what all of the hype was about. 

The novel doesn't have traditional chapters and is instead divided by days of the week, leading up to the wedding. And truth be told, after reading day one, I wasn't sure if I was going to finish it. It felt a little weighed down in details and in a headspace I wasn't sure I wanted to be in. It felt a little slow. But, I try to abide by my 20% rule (to give a novel up to 20% to hook me before I decide whether or not I want to keep reading it or not) and so I stuck with it and ended up really enjoying it. 

It starts with Phoebe drowning in a pit of despair and loathing. She's arrived at a most magnificent resort-like inn to off herself. Little does she know that she has checked herself into a place that was reserved for a wedding. She finds herself swept up in the wedding festivities--the wedding of Lila--and it's just the thing to dissuade her from her original plans. She gets to know Lila--a mix of spoiled and observant and honest and dishonest--and her groom, as she also gets to know herself. In the span of a week, Phoebe has an opportunity to reinvent herself, to become the woman that she wants to be, not the woman she felt like she should be or had to be, and through that finds a chance to live a life that feels more like her. 

After the first wedding day, the rest of the novel felt lighter and more entertaining and engaging. I found that I liked Phoebe and understood her so much better than I thought I could. The wedding party was filled with characters ...and I do mean characters. 

As the days of the week passed, I enjoyed the novel more and more and found that it had some pretty insightful moments. I'm glad I stuck with it. 

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SYNOPSIS:

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 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.