For fans of Monica Heisey’s Really Good, Actually and Kevin Wilson, Alison Espach’s THE WEDDING PEOPLE is a pitch-perfect balance of humor and heartbreak.

THE WEDDING PEOPLE
by Alison Espach
Holt, 2024
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Phoebe Stone arrives at the grand Cornwall Inn wearing a green dress and gold heels, not a bag in sight. She’s immediately mistaken by everyone in the lobby for one of the wedding guests, but she’s the only one 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 alone, at the lowest moment of her life.

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. Soon Phoebe is swept into the lives and the dysfunction of the wedding people, finding herself forever changed.

Alison Espach is the author of the novels The Adults and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Vogue, Joyland, Glamour, Salon, and McSweeney’s, among other places. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island.