The Wedding People

March 1, 2024

In the newest from Espach (author of the multi-best-booked Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance), Phoebe arrives at a grand hotel in Newport, RI, to fulfill a dream trip and finds the inn taken over for a wedding. The bride has meticulously planned the weekend but didn't factor in Phoebe, who turns out to be a good confidante. With a 150K-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

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June 10, 2024
Espach (Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance) offers a sparkling and slightly macabre novel of a 30-something woman finding a new lease on life. After adjunct English professor Phoebe Stone’s husband leaves her for her colleague, she declines an invitation to return the next semester, unable to stomach seeing her husband’s new lover. Unable to find another teaching job, she checks into a luxury hotel in Newport, R.I., where she’s always wanted to stay, and plans to end her life with her cat’s painkillers. She doesn’t count on the hotel teeming with wedding guests, or meeting the 20-something bride, Lila, who, after hearing of Phoebe’s plans, does everything she can to keep Phoebe alive, worried a suicide would mess up her perfect wedding. During an early morning soak in the hotel’s hot tub, Phoebe is drawn to a handsome stranger and buoyed by their connection, even though he lets her know he’s taken after she brazenly hits on him. The next day, Phoebe learns he’s the groom. Over the course of her brief stay, Phoebe, having chosen to stay alive, musters the courage to break her old patterns and stop letting people walk over her, which leads to a triumphant finale. Readers are in for a treat.

Starred review from June 1, 2024
Phoebe Stone has always wanted to stay at the Cornwall Inn in Newport, Rhode Island. She envisioned visiting with her husband, but now he's left her for a colleague at the college where they both teach, so she goes to the Cornwall alone, intent on killing herself. Except when she arrives, she finds the hotel taken over by a large wedding party. The bride, Lila, finagles her way into Phoebe's room and begs her not to ruin her wedding day with suicide. Then an emotionally intense encounter in a hot tub changes Phoebe's perspective, and she thinks maybe she can move forward, with honesty. Except the man from the hot tub turns out to be the groom, Gary, there with his sullen preteen daughter. To complicate matters further, Lila's maid of honor is a no-show, and she begs Phoebe to step in. Hijinks ensue--too many Jims to count, the panda-sex expert--but The Wedding People is so much more than a funny story (though it is very funny). Espach (Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, 2022) has penned a keenly observed novel about depression, love, the ways women make themselves small, and how one woman got over it. Fully realized and completely memorable.

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Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding. Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat's painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: "No. You definitely can't kill yourself. This is mywedding week." After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable--if overstuffed--comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There's some fun to be had here: The wedding party--including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter--takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don't want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves. Uneven but fitfully amusing.

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