First thank you to Henry Holt books and NetGalley for an advanced readers copy in exchange for an honest review

⭐️⭐️⭐️✨ 3.75 stars

Synopsis: phoebe checks into the luxurious hotel and is mistaken for a guest of a wedding being held there. She strikes up an unlikely friendship with the bride that changes both of their lives.

What I liked: this book really catches you in the feels. It starts out on a very dark note(check trigger warnings) which leads to phoebe's great arc. I really loved the growth of phoebe and Lila the bride and how they used each other to work through their grief and issues. There is so much wit and dry humor which I loved. I also loved how it wasn’t all wrapped up in a bow and more realistic. Overall there was so much depth to this story and it gives you so much to think about after reading.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it now in your local and online bookstores and libraries.

YOU NEED THIS BOOK!!! I cannot believe I've had this in my kindle library since February and I waited until now to read it. Truly kicking myself! Although this started off a bit more morbid than I had bargained for, it quickly became a humorous and heartwarming story of self-discovery, friendship, loss and love.

Phoebe arrives at a beautiful Inn she considers to be her "happy place" with a rather depressing plan. Upon arrival she realizes she's amongst an entire hotel of wedding guests and her attendance was a slip up on the hotels behalf. After a run-in with the bride, Phoebe is catapulted into the wedding affairs and embraced by the wedding people in a way that will forever change her life. What started off as a mistake just happens to be exactly where Phoebe was always meant to be.

I'll be recommending this book to everyone for quite some time. I loved the unlikely friendships, the quick witted humor, the direct and heavier conversations, and the tremendous growth throughout this uncommonly wise novel.

Pub. Date: July 30, 2024
Huge thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt & Company for my advanced copy!

One of the most excruciating experiences for the freshly divorced, a wedding brings out the fears, joys, and memories of Phoebe's newfound single life in THE WEDDING PEOPLE. Told over the course of the week before the wedding, the story is rich in details and presents the many dimensions of all relationships, friendships and family and friends drawn together for one emotion and event packed occasion. I felt as if I were in Newport, on the Cliff Walk, spotting the strained and loving moments. I empathized with Phoebe and enjoyed spending the week with her. I received a copy of this book and these opinions are my own, unbiased thoughts.

Thank you to NetGalley and Henry Holt and Co. for the ARC of this book!

I'm not sure I've ever read a book that so deeply explores the nuances of the human condition. The character development was just outstanding. This cast of (mostly) loveable and quirky characters were full of personality and complex emotions. I think every single person in this book was going through something and they all could have used a little therapy!

Our FMC, Phoebe unintentionally crashes the poshest Newport wedding and unexpectedly befriends the bride. The two form a strange friendship that ends up being more impactful than either could possibly imagine.

The Wedding People is a testament to the relationships that see us through our biggest emotions. Espach peels back the many layers of each character and gets down to the raw and real. She deals with issues like depression, insecurity, loneliness, divorce, death, and infidelity. I adored Phoebe and the dark comedic spin of this book. I wavered with my rating because the beginning started so slow and it took me quite a bit to get into. But the tension-filled ending more than made up for the glacial start. I completely understand why it's Jenna's pick for August!

This review was SO hard for me to write. I wrote and deleted it like five times because conveying a feeling a book gives you can be hard!! I’ve never read a book that made me feel so… human.

It was the best and worst of human kind, all wrapped up in a must read for the summer. I cried, laughed, blushed, cringed, smiled and sobbed. The writing was beautiful, if not haunting at times. The characters, deeply flawed, still I saw myself in all of them.

Phoebe has hit rock bottom and escapes to a hotel on the ocean. Until she realized she unknowingly crashed a wedding that has booked the hotel for the week. The journey for Phoebe and Lila, the bride, and so many others brought tears to my eyes. I felt myself rooting for the characters the whole time. And I don’t think I’ve properly felt closure in the ending of a book like I did with The Wedding People. 🥹

Now that I’ve raved!!! The first 25% was hard to get through. Just a fair warning, check your trigger warnings or message me & I can fill you in. There was times when it can get pretty heavy but I promise, it gets so much lighter and softer as you go. Life’s hard right? But there’s a place for you always.

Thank you @henryholtbooks for the advanced EARC! 🫶🏼🥹💕

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.

Phoebe and Lila end up forming the most unlikely of friendships and Phoebe suddenly finds herself in the middle of this wedding party. They are a messy bunch, each bringing their own set of issues. I found them all relatable and enjoyed the storyline of all the side characters along with the main ones. This book dealt with what starts as a very serious issue, but somehow manages to handle it in a way that was at times, laugh out loud funny as well. I didn't think that would be possible, but this author pulls it off in spectacular fashion. I was totally entertained the entire way through and was rooting for a happy ending for everyone. This was also a @readwithjenna book club pick, and I have had pretty good luck with her choices. Overall, a great Summer read for me with the perfect seaside setting, a wedding and a great story with substance and humor. I look forward to reading anything Alison writes in the future too!

Thank you to @henryholt&co, @netgalley and the author @alisonespach for the advanced copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

Wonderful read from start to finish! The main character was delightful and so was the rest of the cast. Wonderful story and message and I loved it!

This is a contemporary novel about grief, depression, weddings and the difficulties of being human.

There’s a lot about living with depression Espach gets right. How it dulls everything around you, enhances the tedium, makes you sick of everything and everyone, including yourself. The bleakness and misery become normal. You either become desperate to feel something, anything, else or accept this your forever and decide you can’t abide that.

There’s a dry sarcastic wit that rings very true for people in dark places. (Check on your funny friends.) Espach also has an excellent ear for dialogue. There is so much I like about her writing. She really nails some of the realities of the messiness of being a person.

The ending was marvelously messy. A lot of what needed to happen happened but not everything. This was more literary so everything wasn’t wrapped up in a pretty bow. Life isn’t so ​tidy. It ended with hope and promise and, many times, that’s enough. 4.5/5 stars (rounded up on the relevant apps/sites)

This book has me laughing so hard, not only is the whole cover misleading the synopsis doesn’t do this book any justice. But the way this book had me laughing out loud, when I explained to people what I was reading they were like “what?! That’s crazy.”

So Pheobe is going through it, she has recently divorced, she is thinking that she has been doing everything right in the world, Being a normal woman, at least she thinks that she has been, and she decides to take a little trip to this hotel she wanted to visit with her husband. But the reasons why she wants to go to this hotel, is a lot more sinister then I thought. While she is there, there’s a huge wedding happening, and the whole hotel, is occupied by this wedding, and Phoebe doesn’t realize the mess that she just walked into, and it was HILARIOUS!…

She meets the most intrusive, but also funny, self-centered, bride Lila. And Lila is doing everything in her power, to make sure that Phoebe does not ruin her wedding week, and it’s hilarious how this whole thing plays out, I cannot stress it more, the way these two women interact had me so glued to this book, I could not stop reading. In this whole week, while she is being immersed into this wedding, she has learning a lot about herself, and where she had gone wrong in her life, and also in her marriage, It’s a beautiful thing to read a character finally getting to know more about herself, in any age. There were times that I felt very sad for Phoebe, because she appears to be a woman who deserves all the happiness in the world. And she takes advantage of the opportunities in front of her I would do the same, lol.

I will say this, this book is very different, It’s hard to put it in the category, but you have to have a sense of humor to be able to understand everything that’s going on in this book.

For me it was just amazing.

I needed a book like this to spice up my summer reading. Summer means weddings. Summer means boat rides. Summer means surfing. It doesn't necessarily mean death though. Phoebe might think that it's a good time to kill herself but she could not do that when there was a wedding going on in the hotel she checked in, right?

Phoebe was having a crisis after her husband's infidelity. She thought way to make things right was committing suicide. When she found herself in the middle of wedding people and the bride threw a fit when she heard her purpose to be there, Phoebe got a new chance to think about life. her decisions, what she missed, and what she could recover.

While it was such a light read, it was also so deep. It had a woman finding herself after infidelity and miscarriage. It had a woman learning about how not to be like her mother. It had a young woman processing her mother's passing. Women in different ages and from different walks of life supported each other in "subtle" ways without making each other feel like burden to others. Totally loved this book!

I LOVED The Wedding People!! What a wonderful book. The writing was superb, the story so engaging, the characters real and genuine, filled with witty dialogue and a salty coastal setting. Phoebe travels to what she believes is her "happy place," the Cornwall Inn in Rhode Island, and stumbles upon a lobby filled with wedding people. I loved the sections, broken down by days leading up to the wedding, each section filled with activities to keep the characters, and readers, fully engrossed in prewedding festivities. The coast vibe is ideal, and Newport becomes a character in its own right. This heartbreaking and heartwarming book is my favorite of the year. The perfect summer read! Many, many thanks to NetGalley and Henry Holt for the eARC of this brilliant book! 5/5 ⭐️

This is a surprisingly moving book about how people can unexpectedly affect each other's lives. Phoebe starts off as a suicidal, hopeless, and desperate character. The more she becomes involved with the wedding people the more she thrives and finds herself.

The characters in the story are all so fully rounded. They have shades to their character and are neither all good nor all bad. Thus, they feel very realistic and relatable.

This is also a story about change. As the characters in the story learn, change can be good and necessary, and it can take us places we never imagined we would ever go but that is exactly where we need to be in our lives.

This one grew on me a surprising amount from beginning to end- Phoebe is a character that grows and changes a lot from where she is when we meet her in the first pages of the books and where we leave her a week later. There are tender moments, heartbreaking ones, and deeply humorous ones, and characters that really work their way into your heart.

I really enjoyed this one! It starts slow and definitely heavier, but at around the 30% mark, I really started to enjoy it. Flawed but lovable characters & a fun summer story overall.

The first chapter of this book was DARK and I considered DNFing but once the main character and the bride met, I was hooked. The banter is top notch and boy is this story messsssssyyyyyyyyyyyy. It felt realistic though. Phoebe’s inability to let go of her ex husband was so true to life. So was her just covering her dead cat and running away. I’m not really a fan of the cheating trope even if it is just “emotional cheating” and especially when it’s with your best friend’s fiancé but I feel like it worked here because the bride and groom clearly were not going to end up together. It’s a true testament to the author that I really liked the bride even though she was so incredibly frivolous and self centered. This felt like a depressing Wedding Crashers which is very much my vibe.

This is my feedback for the wedding people by Allison espach. Thank you so much NetGalley for allowing me to review this book in exchange for an honest review! My review is linked below! I have it 3.5

This was my first book by this author, and she did a fantastic job drawing me in. The synopsis intrigued me, and once I started, I couldn't stop. I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator did an excellent job bringing each character to life. The book is filled with a diverse cast of characters.

Phoebe arrives in Newport, Rhode Island, intending to end her life. She's at a low point—her husband has divorced her, her cat has died, and her career is stagnant. She checks into a beautiful hotel for what she plans to be her final night. Coincidentally, a wedding week is beginning at the hotel, and everyone assumes she's part of the wedding party. Phoebe wants nothing to do with anyone, but she soon meets the spoiled bride-to-be, Lila, who refuses to let her go.

The interactions and conversations between Phoebe and Lila are captivating. Lila pulls Phoebe into her world, and their lives become increasingly intertwined as the week progresses. The story flows beautifully, and I loved watching their relationship develop.

Both the audiobook and the book itself were incredibly entertaining!

I just finished THE WEDDING PEOPLE by Alison Espach, and it was such a quick read—I couldn't put it down. The story opens with Phoebe arriving alone at a romantic hotel, overwhelmed by personal setbacks and ready to give up. Unexpectedly, she crosses paths with a lively wedding party, sparking funny and insightful conversations with the guests. These interactions lead to mutual growth and honesty among the characters, creating a compelling and engaging narrative. Espach beautifully blends humor and raw honesty, making the book both entertaining and thought-provoking.

I alternated between reading the book and listening to the audiobook narrated by Helen Laser, who brought the characters to life wonderfully. I highly recommend experiencing this story in either format!

I received a complimentary copy of this book. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.

I was wholly unprepared for this book. This isn't your average light-hearted romance -- it has so much depth and heart that I wasn't expecting.

It centers around a week-long wedding with a bride who thinks the hotel is booked out exclusively for wedding guests. And it is....well, with the exception of Phoebe, who shows up with her own plans. Phoebe is a wildcard in the carefully laid plans of the wedding, but sometimes unexpected connections can become the most meaningful.

"The Wedding People" is so many things: it's humorous and heartfelt, will make you laugh out loud and will make you cry. Espach writes with wit and hilariously accurate insight into love, relationships, and wedding charm and chaos. Please, please do yourself a favor and pick this one up!

(on another note, who do we have to lobby to make this into a movie??)