Reading Skywards – Your Friendly Bookshelf

INFORMATION ABOUT THIS BOOK
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Henry Holt and Co.
Publication date ‏ : ‎ July 2024
Format:  Hardcover, Paperback, audiobook, and ebook
Print length ‏ : ‎ 355 pages
Genre:  Contemporary Women Fiction

MY PERSONAL OPINION OF “THE WEDDING PEOPLE”

This book has been on my TBR for a while, and after months of being on the waiting list, it became available in the Libby App. I really was not familiar with the premise of the book, but I heard good reviews overall. And I really liked the cover. I am always looking for new writers and their writing style, so I was happy to get this book because the writing style was, for lack of a better descriptive word, delicious.

This book was shocking from the first few pages. You already know this will be a book to reckon with. You understand early on how fragile Phoebe’s mind is at the beginning of the book, but I was rooting for strenght to overcome and find herself with all her wittiness, and wisdom, and love.

I loved this book. Loved every character, Phoebe, Gary, Lila, Jim, Mel/Juice, all except maybe Matt (the ex-husband). I loved their interactions, Phoebe’s interactions with all of these strangers who became her strangers overnight. I really liked how her mind would drift into a memory or a realization mid-conversation with someone. It was interesting to be inside Phoebe’s head, seeing things from a dark perspective, or perhaps, maybe just a sarcastic way. Every part of the book, every chapter, was meant to drive the story towards the end, and although I figured out how it would end, I still read it with the same hope, rooting for each character’s resolve, especially Phoebe’s.

Oh, what a beautiful, funny, hopeful, sad, happy, and loving book. I will defiantly buy this book for my personal library.

PREMISE OF THE BOOK AS FOUND IN AMAZON / GOODREADS:

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.

MY RATING: 5.0

QUOTES FROM THE BOOK

“Life is strange. Always thinking that this one thing is going to make you happy. Because then you get it. And then you’re maybe not as happy as you imagined you would be. Because every day is just every day. Like the happiness becomes so big you have no choice but to live inside it. Until you can no longer see or feel it. And so you start to fixate on something else” 

“I think we talk about happiness all wrong. As if it’s this fixed state we’re going to reach. Like we’ll just be able to live there, forever. But that’s not my experience with happiness. For me, it comes and goes. It shows up and then disappears like a bubble.”

“Love is visible—it paints the air between two people a different color, and everyone can see it.” 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Wedding People, Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, an Indie Next Pick and Amazon Editors’ Pick for 2022, and The Adults, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Barnes and Noble Discover pick. She has written for McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside Magazine, Joyland and other places. She teaches creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.

Bibliography:

• Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance: a Novel
• The Adults: a Novel