Maximum Shelf: THE WEDDING PEOPLE (4/9/24)

Last week’s Shelf Awareness Maximum Shelf pick was Alison Espach‘s THE WEDDING PEOPLE, 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, 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 women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, this 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.

“Espach’s smart, breezy narrative deftly mixes gallows humor and biting social commentary. Her cast of characters includes recognizable types, treated with compassion: socially awkward academics who don’t know what to say to a grieving colleague; Lila’s brassy, sequin-wearing mother who has her own set of insecurities; and Lila’s groom, Gary, a widowed single dad struggling with the implications (for himself and his tween daughter) of marrying again. Although Lila’s friends and family are (mostly) genuinely happy for her, they all come to the wedding carrying their own baggage, and Phoebe bears witness to some of that baggage–poignant, funny, embarrassing–throughout the weekend.”–Shelf Awareness

SEE THE FULL SUMMARY, REVIEW, AND INTERVIEW WITH ALISON ESPACH ON SHELF-AWARENESS.COM AND ENTER TO WIN A PRINT ARC!