Review by cinnamonrollbooks - The Wedding People

cinnamonrollbooks 's review for:

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

4.25

emotional funny hopeful inspiring lighthearted reflective sad medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Complicated

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

So this is the third woman-in-her-30s/40s-rediscovers-meaning-of-life book I've read in the past few years, and I must say it's my favourite of the genre. The other two were Confessions of a Forty-Something F*ck Up (3.75* - decent!) and The Midnight Library (gave it a 3* when I first read it because I was nicer back then...it now sits pretty as one of my few 1* reads).

The thing about books that have mental health as a theme is they will almost always rub someone up the wrong way. I hated the messaging in The Midnight Library - the anti-medication and anti-therapy implications, the lack of acknowledgement of clinical depression vs circumstantial depression, the fact the novel was basically (bad and very cliched) self-help disguised as fiction, not to mention how basic the writing was and the super flat characters...but other people do love the book and find comfort in it.

The Wedding People has a lot in common with The Midnight Library. The main characters both suffer from listlessness, estranged/lacking family - they both even lose their pet cats within the first few chapters. But The Wedding People has real characters. It doesn't read like a self-help book at all, the book never feels like it's addressing the reader, and yet I feel like readers would learn way more from it than from The Midnight Library (and also chuckle a lot more). Characters learn from each other, from their therapists, from tarot readers, from a panda sex woman (no I will not elaborate) - and it all feels natural. It's just part of the story.

When I say natural, I don't mean realistic, I might add - at least not hyper-realistic. This book falls more in line with the "chick flicks" I used to watch with my mum - not the trashier ones, but something with a bit more depth and bite (Beaches comes to mind...I can't even really remember it but I feel like it fits that vibe). It's a bit silly at times but never cringe, and the emotional moments hit as well as the funnier ones. I found Phoebe and the bride's relationship particularly charming and a good representation of this in the narrative.

I found it quite refreshing that we enter Phoebe's life at the moment that is both her darkest and her turning point - I read another review that claimed her depression was "cured" too quickly but, while I see the point, it made sense to me with Phoebe's character - she's been suffering with depression for years, and clearly has been struggling all her life with some kind of social issues due to her unusual upbringing, but this is her light-bulb moment. The spot of light in the darkest of times. She realises she doesn't want to die, but she's still got that "fuck it, I've got nothing to lose, I do what I want now" energy, which allows her to break free of the fog and propel us into a rather fun story. The thing about depression is - even when it's clinical - it will be made much worse by your circumstances and your way of thinking (this is why therapy can help!), so if you're able to improve those, you will most likely improve your mental health (similar to how you heal quicker if you take time off work when you have the flu - you still have the flu, but you're looking after yourself). Depression is also weird it that it can just lift out of the blue sometimes, just as it can come out of nowhere and knock you flat...I feel like the shock of

the suicide attempt

ironically triggered a lift for Phoebe.

This wasn't a perfect novel. For one thing, while I enjoyed the dialogue, the prose was very basic (really need to know why the editor didn't cut at least half of the uses of the word "laugh" out...most of the time we could tell the characters were laughing from the dialogue!); for another, it was quite a predictable story, albeit one that still had a freshness to it thanks to its unapologetic frankness and care for its characters. (Side note: I loved all the wedding characters, but Matt and Mia...fuck those two.

I'm sorry, Mia, but you SHOULD apologise to Phoebe, actually. Usually I'd stick up for the "other woman", but Phoebe is not only your friend but your colleague, specifically one with a less secure job than you. It doesn't matter if her marriage was dead - you're still a dickhead. As for Matt? Garbage. Struggling with a spouse with depression is valid, and even wanting an out of the relationship is understandable, but he went about it all wrong and then - guess what - leaves Mia too. Alone with a baby (not his, but at this point we clearly see this is a man who wants a child but doesn't necessarily want to be a parent, unlike Phoebe, who is so sweet with Juice.) When he came back at the end I was like THROW HIM IN THE SEA.

This book has big Book Club energy. It also has big Netflix Adaptation in a Few Years energy. And you know what? I'd watch that.

Content Warnings