JUNE BOOK DISCUSSION

**The Wedding People by Alison Espach **

(Fiction, Romance) 2024, 4.12R, 11.5H

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and
the surprising people who help her 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 dreamed 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 two women
can’t stop confiding in each other. In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender,
Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and
resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and
the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.