The Wedding People

Phoebe Stone arrives at the Cornwall Inn in Newport planning to end her life after a devastating stretch that includes a painful divorce, a stalled academic career, and a failed round of IVF. She intends to do it quietly, using her late cat's painkillers, but before she can go through with it she confides her plan to Lila, the bride whose week-long wedding celebration is filling the rest of the hotel. Lila tries to talk her out of it but can't. As Phoebe swallows the pills, she overhears the festivities of the wedding's opening event and has a change of heart, realizing she wants to see the wedding plot play out the way she has spent her career studying marriage plots in literature. She vomits up the pills and survives.

Drawn back into the world of the living, Phoebe becomes increasingly entangled with the wedding party. She has a flirtatious encounter with a man in the hotel hot tub, boldly propositioning him, only to discover the next day that he is Gary, the groom himself. Lila, unaware of the specifics, begins introducing Phoebe to the group as a friend from the art gallery where she works, and pulls Phoebe into the wedding's events, including a sailing outing where Phoebe helps Gary's young daughter, nicknamed Juice, hold a small funeral at sea for a mechanical toy pet that had been a gift from her late mother, a moment that echoes Phoebe's own recent loss of her pet.

When Lila's maid of honor drops out at the last minute, Lila appoints Phoebe as her replacement, having grown close to her over days of private confessions. Phoebe accepts and takes on the role fully. During a drunken bachelorette celebration, Lila admits to Phoebe that she is attracted to Jim, the brother of Gary's late wife, and that she no longer wants to marry Gary — though the next morning she says nothing more about it, and the wedding preparations continue, with Gary and Phoebe drawn closer together through shared errands and moments.

On the day of the wedding itself, Lila becomes upset over the car sent to take her to the ceremony and has a breakdown, once again declaring that she does not want to marry Gary. This time her decision holds, and she asks Phoebe to go tell the assembled wedding party that the wedding is off. The wedding does not happen. The following day, Phoebe and Gary find themselves back at the hotel hot tub together, reuniting in the same place where they first connected, suggesting the beginning of a relationship between them as the book closes.