I must say I was a little dubious about the premise of this book, but I’d heard so many good things, I hesitantly plunged in. In The Wedding People, life has hit rock bottom for our protagonist, Phoebe Stone, an academic who teaches Victorian literature, but has never finished her dissertation. She’s stuck in a low paying role at the same university as her ex-husband Matt. He’d left her for her best friend after he and Phoebe had tried and failed to have a child. Already at a low ebb, the discovery of Harry, her cat, dead in the basement is too much and she plans to kill herself. What better place to do it than the Cornwall Inn.

The Cornwall Inn was a holiday destination Phoebe had hoped to enjoy with Matt, but he’d had other ideas. It’s a luxury hotel on the coast, so she books herself into the penthouse suite and arrives in her best dress and with no luggage, Harry’s painkillers in her handbag. She’ll order room service, watch the sunset and pass gently away on the canopied bed. The thought of reading about someone about to take their life was a little daunting but, as Phoebe waits to check in at the hotel’s reception, I soon realised this novel was going to be fun.

Also at the hotel, people are gathering for a wedding. Lila is throwing a huge, million-dollar affair to celebrate her nuptials to Gary, and thinks she’s booked the entire hotel for her guests for the week. She’s not pleased to find an interloper in the penthouse suite and challenges Phoebe about it in the lift. The two strike up an odd kind of alliance over the days leading up to the wedding, and Phoebe finds herself a confidante to all manner of concerns Lila has, which for some reason she doesn’t share with her bridesmaids. Lila seems to be as much alone as Phoebe.

“I never understood why my mother was so obsessed with art. I studied it for four years, and honestly, I get it even less now. Like seriously, what’s the point of it?”
Again, the bride looks at Phoebe and waits.
“Are you asking me?” Phoebe asks.
“Have you never been in a conversation before?”
“It’s been a while, actually.”
“I can tell.”
“And to be honest, I’m not sure I get the point, either.”
When Phoebe left for graduate school, she had very clear and beautiful ideas about art, how art is what elevates us, art is the magnificence wrung from the ugly dish towel of existence. Art helps us feel alive. And this had been true for Phoebe – Phoebe used to read books and feel astounded. She used to walk around galleries, inspired by the beautiful human urge to create. But that was years ago. Now she can’t stand the sight of her books. Can’t bear the thought of reading hundreds of pages just to watch Jane Eyre get married again.

As the wedding draws closer, Phoebe becomes swept into the wedding preparations, filling in for a missing maid of honour and taking part all kinds of events – from the bachelorette party to learning to surf – and develops an unfortunate attraction to the groom. Without a charger for her phone she is quite cut off from her old life, and starts to imagine something new. I loved how her area of expertise appears in the book, her knowledge of Victorian heroines like Jane Eyre and also the Mrs Dalloway she decides to finish when she finds it on the hotel bookshelves.

There’s also a host of humorous characters that you get to know, like Jim the best man who Lila finds a bit over-friendly, and Patricia, her mother, accused of drinking in the afternoon. Phoebe gets to know them and learn their secrets. Weddings, it seems, don’t bring out the best in people, and Phoebe discovers all sorts bubbling away under the petulant exterior of Marla, the groom’s sister, or the sullenness of young Juice, his daughter. You can talk to someone like Phoebe, who you’ll probably never see again after the wedding, a bit like talking to a priest.

Which is the other thing I love about this book – the dialogue, which is hugely entertaining. I can just imagine the book would be terrific on screen (apparently, film rights have been sold). The Wedding People is probably the most enjoyable book I’ve read this year – it’s fun, clever and resonates emotionally too. So it’s an easy five stars from me.