Genre - Contemporary/Literary Fiction

Trigger Warning - Suicide

Phoebe decides that she is done. Post pandemic her husband abruptly announces that he is in love with another woman (their friend) and leaves her. She struggles to return to face to face teaching as an English adjunct. She can’t write - she has been trying and failing to convert her PhD thesis into a book for years, and so she can’t land a full professorship. After a long and discouraging day she returns home to find her cat dead. Phoebe books an outrageously expensive room in the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Isand and intends to end her life there. Instead she finds the rest of the Inn booked for Lila’s wedding. Lila is appalled at her presence there and her plans for suicide - how that would ruin her perfect wedding! What follows is touching and funny.

I have all kinds of reasons to love this book. Like Phoebe I was an English teacher. All the literary references, metaphors, etc. were spot on for me and added another level to my reading. But note - if you are not a lover of the classics, the book would read just as well, and who knows, Espach might just lure you into some additional reading. I love a good wedding, reading about them, seeing them on TV, and so on. Quite honestly I am fascinated with the setting. I have long been fascinated by the Vanderbilts and the gilded age, so much here to read and wonder about. I have never really stayed at such a swanky place and the depiction of it is just so funny…someday. I love character driven novels, and Phoebe is just so incredibly illustrated here. The author does a remarkable job of showing not telling. I find Phoebe’s journey 100% believable. Espach creates a lovely cast of wedding people to surround her. Lila is so annoying, but hard not to love. Her family and friends are well drawn. We even get to know the inn staff just a bit. She juggles a number of people with ease, and I began to feel like I knew them all by the time I was done. I also appreciated the incredible tightline Espach walked on between sorrowful angst and humorous ironies.

Phoebe’s journey just absolutely touched something in me. While my marriage is intact, I can relate to much of what Phoebe struggles with in the sense that she has lost her way. She has been a people pleaser and is just exhausted with it and finding that such behavior has not really brought her to her goals or to a sense of happiness. Anybody who has made big changes will appreciate her sadness and rejoice in the changes her experience at the inn and with these people bring. I am in the middle of big changes. Sometimes I feel so stuck in my patterns and the place where my choices brought me…not unhappy, just a bit unsettled. As I work to change, the example of Phoebe’s growth is a gift. And for me - her analyses in light of the literature that she loved (used to love? still loves in a different way?) was a delightful bonus for me. And certainly the idea that the literature we love can shape our point of view resonates with me. I have to explore that further in my own life to be sure. If you are in a place of change - forced or needed - give The Wedding People by Alison Espach a read. You will appreciate the insight and the hope. If you just love a good book that will make you chuckle and introduce you to some fine fictional folks, give it a read - publishes on July 30, 2024. Thanks Netgalley for the ARC to review.