The Wedding People by Alison Espach

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.

Weddings can bring out the best and worst in people, but in Alison Espach’s The Wedding People, it brings out new discoveries about people that they didn’t realize in themselves before. Accidentally booking the top suite in a seaside hotel that was also completely reserved for Lila and Gary’s wedding, Phoebe leaves her entire withdrawn and broken life behind for a final last check-in at the Cornwall Inn. After witnessing her life pass by in a distant marriage only to completely fall apart soon after, her dark one way trip to Newport is interrupted by an overzealous and perfectionist bride. Despite being billed as a chick lit romance, The Wedding People is very much a contemporary drama novel that focuses on Phoebe’s introspective journey to rediscover herself and regain interest in life. This one started off really rough and I struggled immensely to get through the first third of the book. However as it progressed and when it focused on Phoebe and Lila’s unorthodox friendship, I found it to be a much stronger read.

Right off the bat, I will be the first to admit that I’m nowhere near the readers and demographics this novel is clearly written for. A divorced FMC in her mid 40’s, Phoebe carries heavy baggage and values that do not resonate at all with me personally. Minor spoilers but these topics include divorce, an affair, infertility, depression, jealousy, spiraling, etc. Phoebe’s character is one that’s conservatively blank, passive, an excessive logical planner that’s also incredibly emotional, introverted, and fixated on others’ expectations. For many readers that are introverted feelers, I guarantee most will feel like they’ve been seen by this book and can relate to Phoebe. Unfortunately Phoebe’s backstory, character, and personality compared to me were like oil and water, and that heavily impacted my enjoyment of the first 100 pages. Whether it was Espach’s goal to present Phoebe’s character logic as being purposely flawed or to show the complexity of a separation where no one party is to blame, I struggled to empathize or care about Phoebe’s plight. A rather unfortunate note, I felt like Taylor Swift’s song “Anti-hero” was constantly playing in the background everytime Phoebe reflected on her past pain and life. The actual content and internalized thoughts were technically excellent in concept and were sentiments I’ve heard some of my more emotional friends experience verbatim. A lot of bad situations are thrown at Phoebe but she could’ve easily done something or really any attempt to address them instead of hesitating and doing nothing. I couldn’t help but feel like saying “sometimes it’s not all about you” or found myself actually agreeing with the “aggressors” of Phoebe’s pain (yes, I acknowledge that this can look like victim-blaming).

(TRIGGER WARNING)
And that’s a really bad takeaway when the reader is clearly meant to root for Phoebe, particularly when she decides to commit suicide after seeing the ocean and having a grand final room-service dinner via cat painkillers. It took me nearly two weeks of picking up this book and repeatedly almost DNF-ing to get through Phoebe’s backstory that leads to her decision to end her life by the sea (Phoebe was fighting to end her life in her imagined way while I was fighting to care at all about it). Phoebe’s depression and suicide were the elements I had the most issues with in the book mostly due to the reasoning behind it. On one hand, yes depression is a serious matter and for many people, it doesn’t make logical sense to someone who isn’t experiencing it. On the other hand, I have yet to read a book tackling depression that left me so apathetic to what happens to its character. I’m willing to give Espach a partial pass on this due to how well plotted and executed Phoebe’s shift in perspective is written during her stay at the Cornwall Inn, but this first section was rough for me. However, I appear to be in the minority as a logical guy in his 30’s who does not care about marriage or kids, I’m anything but who this book is targeted for.

The good news is that once Lila was introduced, everything started moving in the right direction. Superficially the complete opposite of Phoebe, their early stranger interactions were quite humorous and finally got me invested in the story. The book continued to improve with the groom Gary, his daughter Mel or “Juice”, and even their various wedding guests. Despite early scenes portraying the bride and groom’s families as quirky, dysfunctional members who all can’t stand each other, Espach did a great job of adding additional layers to each with the takeaway that Phoebe only sees who they want her to see.

Characters outside of Phoebe and Lila were generally quite good, except for Lila’s two bridesmaids who were ridiculously silly and had almost no substance, though I understand they were clearly meant to contrast Phoebe’s presence. However, nearly every other character was presented with deeper layers and backstories which made these two standout negatively. Lila’s mother Patricia was perhaps the most intriguing of the side characters due to her tense relationship with her daughter and her projection of her own life and realizations onto her. While I considered Phoebe’s depression to be alienating and overdramatic personally, I found Gary’s form of depression to be executed better despite the lack of pages and time spent on it. His baggage felt more substantiated and better incorporated into the dynamics of his relationship with his fiance Lila. The same could be said about his daughter Juice who is caught in-between Gary and Lila’s engagement while still grieving the death of her Mom and Gary’s first wife Wendy. Some of my favorite parts of the book involved Phoebe’s unconfident, yet well-meaning moments with Juice.

No matter the character or their backstory, nearly every relationship or conflict in The Wedding People largely hinges on some variation of miscommunication (or in this case, lack of communication). And normally this is a trope I have little patience for, particularly in romantic drama novels. However, I found the miscommunication to be well-done and at times, surprisingly clever depending on the relationship. Lila and Gary’s brother in law Jimmy, Lila and her mother Patricia, Phoebe and Gary, Gary and Juice, nearly every pair had miscommunication done well except for Phoebe and her ex-husband Matt as previously discussed. While some are quite meaty in content, some are even completely comical like art gallery owner Patricia’s marriage to her late husband, who confessed on his deathbed that he hates contemporary art and only pretended to like it on her behalf.

While the overall plot and the various wedding events were entirely predictable, it was the insightful commentary and character growth and kept me going. Phoebe and Lila’s unexpected friendship was my favorite part of the book (no easy feat considering I often find gal pal girlfriend interactions frivolous unless done well), and her ability to be honest and candid with Lila was a highlight, contrasting her inability to do anything for herself prior to her suicide attempt. I also respected Espach’s ending that emphasized how much Phoebe grew both in confidence and as a person without resorting to the expected and contrived “love and marriage makes everything okay.” Doing so would’ve undermined one of the book’s core themes that marriage and relationships can’t solve your own problems until you address them yourself. I can see some romance readers being disappointed by the ending lacking an expected romantic conclusion, but it did just what it needed to do for me personally. I also often find a lot of books that deal with depressive or suicidal characters fail to pull off the character growth necessary to change their outlook on life. The Wedding People is definitely one of the more competent recent attempts I’ve read, despite its questionable depressive starting point.

Written in a 3rd person present tense (admittedly not one of my preferred points of view), I had a bit of a mixed opinion on Espach’s writing. While easy to read, I consistently felt like too much of the story was being told to the reader vs being shown. The character dialogue and Phoebe’s thoughts were good in concept, but I felt like there could’ve been so much more character growth to draw in the reader had more of it been done on-paper. For example the book would show Phoebe and Gary having light banter with written dialogue, and then completely skip entire conversations with “and Phoebe learns about Gary’s background as a gastroenterologist” or “Phoebe tells him about her past cat Harry.” I felt like so many details and character moments were lost to Espach’s constant tendency of writing “off paper” that it weakened the overall narrative and experience. The Wedding People’s content is good, but it could’ve been great for me if elaborated further. I also had a love-hate relationship with the attempts at dark humor. For every dark jab or snark that worked, there were equally as many that missed the mark or worse, occasionally felt like they were making a comical folly out of heavy topics like suicide. And this is coming from someone who’s known for having dark humor and making jokes out of morally questionable content.

All in all, considering the story and Phoebe’s character values contrasting my personality and reading interests, The Wedding People ended up being far better than I hoped for based on the first 100 pages. I understand the hype and can see so many people connecting and feeling seen by it, particularly older women in their late 30’s and up (or those mentally old and aged lol). Ultimately though this wasn’t a book for me and no matter how good it became as it progressed, that beginning arc was painful to persevere through. Had the first arc been adjusted, this would’ve easily been at least a 4 star or higher read for me. However as is, I’m going with 3.5 rounded down. This is one that I’m very curious to see what some of my friends think of, considering they are closer to those this book targeted readers than me.