the_wedding_people

I know I am not a unique guy. If you think 'what books would a straight white man in his 30s living in New England read', well, that's what I would read. Sci-fi, fantasy, classics... it is what it is.

BookTok and women abound; most of the reading that goes on around me is very much not any those genres. Women read more than men, and romance/tasy genre sales have been surging since covid. Not only does the data say so, but in my daily conversations with women in my life it is clear that I am operating in a much smaller taste bubble. I requested that someone 'just give me something' to read as long as it 'has one of those romance covers that all look like each other'. I was informally included in the work book club temporarily and I read The Wedding People by Alison Espach.

The BookTok categorization carries with it many connotations and expectations, all of which are detractors for me. Tropes sell. Book buyers these days can choose which handful of tropes they are interested in (enemies to lovers, happily every after, reverse harem), and there will be a novel out there that checks them all off. Many even advertise themselves with a bullet-point list of which ones they cover. The act of choosing these kinds of books is like walking through a buffet line of story tropes and piling them up onto your plate. The commodification and modularization of novels undermines what I consider to be the whole purpose of storytelling. It is partly about entertainment, yes, but it is really about finding a way to dissolve the walls between minds - the author wants the reader to understand them. I know that's not what I'm getting here, so I did what I could to adjust my expectations.

Spoiler review ahead.

This is a story of a woman being dumped, and getting away to an expensive hotel to kill herself. It feels as unbelievable typing it out now as it did reading it the first time. She somehow books the spare room in a wedding block and is socially absorbed by the wedding party and eventually by the bride herself. She falls in love with the groom-to-be, and also is elevated to the status of maid of honor at the wedding. Obviously the wedding is called off because the bride realizes (is convinced?) that she does not love her fiance. We are allowed to assume a happily ever after without the author telling us that the protagonist and former groom-to-be ever actually get together.

There are a total of like three characters in this book - dialogue between Phoebe (our main girl) and the groom feel like conversations that Alison Espach would have with herself in the shower. These two characters think and speak exactly the same way, like they're the perfect match, but it really just feels they're the same person. Even the groom's snarky daughter, Mel, with whom Phoebe find 'special' connection, is basically just the author putting herself in the shoes of her younger self. She does so, however, while completely forgetting what it was like to be a child. This kid behaves like a sarcastic jaded adult. Even her 'irrational' care for virtual pet comes off as a contrived literary device that betrays any honest characterization.

The author takes plenty of playful diversions in the dialogue and storytelling. Here is what you get for humor in this book:

"You honestly expect me to believe that people go on vacations without making a spreadsheet of fun first?"

So there's that. Someone does randomly have sex with a car exhaust at some point, though. I'm not sure if I found that funny, necessarily, but it really stuck with me for the duration of the read. It didn't really change the story in any way, either. Some guy just banged a fancy classic car and ran away.

Unless I'm missing a metaphor in there... but I doubt it.

I don't remember being wowed by any insights shared in the story, but I do remember rolling my eyes. Here are the top two most popular quotes on Goodreads:

There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.

I just mean, a story can be beautiful not because of the way it ends. But because of the way it’s written.

Cliche worn out stuff. As I said previously, though, that is not what I expected to take away from this book. What I got was what I expected - a beach read about a depressed girl at a strangers wedding. Some pretty incredible things happen, and I was suspending my disbelief from beginning to end. Such suspension prevented me from really immersing myself in the story, unfortunately.

It wasn't awful, but unfortunately it was also not a very positive experience outside of my literary comfort zone.

The Wedding People: - Found Family - Solo Observer - Secret Millionaire - Motherhood - HEA - Mistaken Identity