Alison Espach's The Wedding People Book Review

 The Wedding People 

By Alison Espach 

Published Year: 2024

Page Count : 384 pages

Medium Used: Kindle Scribe 

Genre : Contemporary Fiction, Romance, Weddings, Life Lessons, 2025-read. 

Rating : 5/5 

I could see the ending but not predict the events leading to it. I want to say this book is very predictable but that won't be entirely right. More than their impulsive actions, the lead characters leave it to the events or the stars to bring them together. I liked this very much and it made them seem so matured and controlled. At one point, I felt a mild panic that it is all slipping out of hand but then the universe does what it should. At the outset this reads like watching an Indian Bollywood movie. Yes it is a much tested and worked recipe. But that is not entirely right as well. The main characters are more nuanced than simple film actors. I loved reading this. This has so much depth than usual romance books. There is no smut what so ever and that is a big yes yes for me. I also liked some well thought through observations on people chasing after a transient, ever shifting state of happiness and loneliness even when one is married to another. The characters are well developed..some likeable, some not so much .. but Alison got me invested in their futures and reactions. 

Lily is the rich bride who is throwing a million dollar wedding with the money her dying father gave her. She is marrying a man almost twelve years her senior and her mother opines that Lily is seeing him as a replacement of her lost father. The groom is Gary, a gastroenterologist and Lily's father's doctor who treated him for colon cancer. They first meet at an art exhibition and conclude that fate has drawn them to each other. They have little in common and hardly anything to say to each other most of the time. Enter into the picture, our heroine, Phoebe. She books a room in the hotel - where Lily's wedding is being hosted - to commit suicide. She has been left by her long term, cheating husband and that rocks her world apart. But after she meets Gary to whom she can tell anything and be her self with no filters, she starts changing. She makes some radical and sure decisions of her future. How does fate bring Gary and Phoebe together..? What happens to Lily and her million dollar expensive wedding ? Its a good read. 

I felt the other characters also added to the overall plot. Mainly Gary's family - his sister, Marla and his daughter, Juice. Lily is entirely spoiled and when she has so much money, so much of everything, why would she look for compromise? When she could obtain what she wants, when she has a long life to get it? 

It is not a thriller but is unputdownable all the same.!!