Review by jg93 - The Wedding People

jg93 's review for:

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

DID NOT FINISH: 42%

DNF @ 42% - this book has been extremely hyped up, but unfortunately I'm finding this a slog to get through. I knew going in that there would be darker subject matter, but the balance between the heavy topics like

suicide and infertility

with the humour is not working for me. As much as I can also identify with Phoebe at times, most of the characters feel very flat and unrealistic. After deciding to DNF, I also intentionally spoiled myself on the ending, and it's what I already guessed would happen. I'm not seeing a point in continuing, as I can't imagine this would be above a 3 star at most for me, even if it improved in the second half.

Also, a major issue for me is the fact that, while we spend a lot of time with Phoebe being understandably devastated over her ex-husband's affair, I already felt weird about the connection forming between her and the soon-to-be groom. From reading other reviews, it appears that they never cross a physical line, and the wedding doesn't end up happening (luckily) but to me, their scenes were already pointing towards an emotional affair, and it felt like a bizarre decision, considering that her life had just been shattered by her husband's affair.

There was another smaller (potentially nit-picky) thing that bothered me, and contributed to me putting this down. I listened to the audiobook, and there were several points where the narrator would abruptly change mid-chapter (and this isn't a multiple POV book where it would make sense to have portions read by a different narrator) These spliced-in sections also sounded very robotic compared to the main narrator, and I found it jarring every time.

Content Warnings