The Wedding People

Finalist for the 2026 Thurber Prize for American Humor - Winner of the Goodreads Choice Award

A Today Show Read With Jenna Book Club Pick, New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, Book of the Month Club Pick, and a #1 Indie Next Pick - Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, Time, Chicago Tribune, HuffPost, US Magazine, Elle, Real Simple, and Glamour

A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help us start anew.

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 dreamt of coming for years - she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she's here without him. 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.

In turns uproariously, absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach's The Wedding People is a look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined - and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.