PYL Book Club (September 2025) The Wedding People by Alison Espach

Last month, someone shared the ‘hot’ books for the summer and I decided to add all of them to my Libby request list. The Wedding People by Alison Espach was one of the first to become available and being without a book, I decided to read it despite having no clue what it was about.

I was about 25 pages into it, wondering if I was going to continue reading it, when I saw another gal on TikTok give her impression of the book. She shared that it was difficult for her to get into it, but she was glad she did.

So I kept going.

If you don’t know the premise (trigger warning), an unhappy, lost, newly divorced 40-something woman (wow, this sounds familiar…Champagne Letters) has had enough and books a very expensive room at a hotel to end what she sees as a useless and miserable life. It was a place she’d hoped to go to with her now ex-husband, before he decided to cheat on her with her friend, and leave her for said friend.

It’s a rough start.

But it gets interesting when she gets there and she learns that she has inadvertently been allowed to book the best room at the hotel in what was supposed to have been completely reserved for a private event, a very expensive wedding with 6 days of activities. The only other people at the hotel are the people who work there doing their best to make the bride insanely happy and pamper and care for the wedding guests, or, rather, the wedding people.

Instead of ending her life (minor spoiler but it won’t ruin it for you), she inadvertently (yes, I used the word again) becomes one of the wedding people.

I didn’t love this book, in fact I really disliked it for the first half of the book until I started to see some characters more fully develop. There was a circuitous and slightly interesting path to a predictable ending and I don’t regret giving my time to this book, but it’s also only getting 3 out of 5 stars from me. It’s average.

I asked the midlife woman behind the register at Barnes & Noble if she’d read it and if so, what she thought of it. She wrinkled her nose and responded, “I thought it was depressing.”

I would agree that for 90% of the book, it’s hard not to feel bad for most of the characters so I get where she’s coming from. The tidy ending pretty much erases that sentiment and I left feeling hopeful for all of them.

If you read the book, what were your thoughts? Did you like it? Did you find it depressing? Was the ending just right or too tidy for you? Drop me a line at pilotingyourlife@gmail.com or by adding a comment below. I’d love to hear from you.

Personal Reflection Prompt:

— When have you found yourself in what seemed like the completely wrong place but ended up being exactly where you needed to be?

Remember to buy local and support women owned bookstores. All links to books in this post are to bookshop.org.

About the Author

**Terri Hanson Mead** is the multi-award winning author of Piloting Your Life, Managing Partner of Solutions2Projects, LLC, travel journalist and vlogger with her husband Zeke (Zeke and Terri), Stanford Continuing Studies Instructor (Navigating Midlife for Women), and an advocate for women through all of her platforms including YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and this blog. Terri, the mother of a college senior and recent college graduate (pursuing his master’s in philosophy at SF State), is based in Redwood City, CA and in her spare time, loves to travel, cook, play tennis, and fly helicopters around the San Francisco Bay Area, especially under the Golden Gate Bridge. Oh, and she will never pass up a glass of good bubbly or fun cocktail (even if she wants a good night’s sleep!)!