Life: It Goes On - June 24

Happy Tuesday! I hadn't realized how long I'd gone without blogging until I just finished up a review that I'd left hanging open and found out I lasted posted on the 8th! I've been feeling down lately, maybe more down than I realized. 

It's also been, for us, fairly busy this month. Since I last wrote, we've had visits from my uncle and aunt and from my sister and her husband. Which, of course, means that I've been keeping my house cleaner this month that I might otherwise have been. Father's Day weekend we were busy all weekend with activities. And I had an employee in office from Texas the week before last at the same time that I had a new employee start, which drained my battery every day. 

And last week I spent an hour every day taking care of Mini-him's and Miss C's cats while they were on yet another mini-vacation. Oh to have so many free miles and the ability to work away from home! Luckily, Big Guy is perfectly able to wipe up a dinner while I'm stopping to do that on my way home from work. 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Good Material by Dolly Alderton. This week I started listening to Long Island Compromise, which I had been reading in print until the audiobook became available. 

Watched: All of the College World Series games, including the one BG, Mini-him and I went to on Father's Day. 

Read: I'm floundering when it comes to actually reading a book. I'm back to Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century by Peter Graham, but it's slow going for me. 

Made: Spaghetti with meat sauce; roasted tomato and spinach pasta, and egg roll in a bowl. 

Enjoyed: Dinner out with my sister and her husband - I finally found my new favorite restaurant macaroni and cheese. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: Nothing on the calendar for the rest of the week so I'm plugging away and decluttering my office. I've joined a new group on Facebook created around the book, The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning. Because maybe if I join enough groups, I be able to keep myself working on clearing things out. 

Thinking About: Politics. I try to avoid them but have to balance that against wanting to be informed and involved. 

Feeling: Better. I finally admitted to my doctor that I've been struggling with depression and I've started on a medication that seems to be starting to help. 

Looking forward to: A relaxing weekend. Which I hope is cool enough to spend time outside again. Last weekend was ridiculously hot. 

Question of the week: How have you been beating the heat? 

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

The Wedding People by Alison Espach

384 pages

Published July 2024 by Holt, Henry and Company, Inc. 

Publisher's Summary: 

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 dreamed of coming for years—she hoped to shuck oysters and take sunset sails with her husband, only now she’s here without him, at rock bottom, and determined to have one last decadent splurge on herself. Meanwhile, the bride has accounted for every detail and every possible disaster the weekend might yield except for, well, Phoebe and Phoebe's plan—which makes it that much more surprising when the two women can’t stop confiding in each other.

In turns absurdly funny and devastatingly tender, Alison Espach’s The Wedding People is ultimately an incredibly nuanced and resonant look at the winding paths we can take to places we never imagined—and the chance encounters it sometimes takes to reroute us.

My Thoughts: 

When the publisher says that Phoebe is at rock bottom, what they mean to say is that Phoebe has abruptly left her home and her job to travel to the Cornwall Inn to commit suicide. When she arrives, she discovers that the rest of the hotel has been taken over by a wedding party...and a bride who discovers Phoebe's plan and insists that Phoebe cannot do what she's come to do. Not because Lila is empathetic and longs to save a life. Nope, it's because Lila absolutely cannot abide the idea of having her wedding week ruined by such a thing. 

That's a hell of a way to start a book and I couldn't imagine where things were going to go from there. And I would really, really love to tell you what happens next. I raced through the book as Espach introduced us to the various wedding people, including bride Lila and groom Gary and as she looked back at what had brought Phoebe to this low point in her life. As I met most of the wedding people, my first instinct was that these characters were stereotypes, but none of them ended up that way; each of them got enough background and room in the book to show us who they really are. 

The Wedding People runs the gamut of emotions - from the tough beginning to humor, from sadness to frustration. It's more complex than it appears, but moves along a quick enough pace to keep things light. The ending could have been cliche. Did Espach lay out where things were going? Yes, but when it came time to conclude the book, it happened in a very realistic and more believable way. For me, this one was well worth the hype.