Synopsis:

A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick

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

I could NOT resist picking up The Wedding People by Alison Espach when I read the synopsis. Something about it was so intriguing. And the early reviews were glowing. I’m so very happy I didn’t let this one pass by. Deeply compelling, humorous and heartbreaking, I didn’t want this one to end.

Maybe this is the part of her life when she gets to start saying what she means, for better or worse. Because no amount of truth can be worse than the feeling she got after years of hiding from it.

This is one of those books that will be very hard to review without spoilers, but I recommend going into it as blindly as you can, just maybe checking out those content warnings before you start, if you’re someone susceptible to triggers. It contained a few of the triggers I typically try to avoid, but the author handles them with such care and humor, they didn’t bother me at all.

Phoebe arrives at the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island, dressed in her most glamorous dress, not a piece of luggage in sight, and not expecting to encounter a crowd of wedding people arriving for a destination wedding. She’s quickly mistaken for a wedding guest since the entire inn has been reserved for wedding people only.

The bride doesn’t understand yet, what it means to be married. To share everything. To have one bank account. To pee with the door wide open while telling your husband a story about penguins at the zoo. And then one day, to wake up entirely alone. To look back at your whole life like it was just a dream and think, What the fuck was that?