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maiakobabe 's review for:
The Wedding People
by Alison Espach
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
fast-paced
Phoebe Stone, a deeply depressed and recently divorced adjunct English professor, checks in at a beautiful hotel by the sea with the intent of killing herself after the end of one decadent night. But she starts to run into roadblocks immediately, including the fact that the entire rest of the hotel is fully booked for a 6 day wedding. Phoebe strikes up a blunt and unlikely friendship with the bride, and after a failed attempt at her own life, lets herself be pulled into the whirlwind of drama in the bridal party. The humor in this book is often dark, but it is also very funny and very human. I was impressed that the author made this kind of wild premise work as well as it did. I became invested in Phoebe's relationships with the bride, the groom, the groom's preteen daughter from a previous relationship, and various other attendees. I loved that part of Phoebe's decision to stick around and see what else life had to offer was breaking out a creative block and a decision to completely change everything about how she'd lived in the previous version of life. Big content warning for suicide; but I think it was handled thoughtfully.