Congratulations to Alison Espach and JooHee Yoon! The Wedding People and The Book of Whys are the 2025 Rhode Island Great Reads books and our submissions for the National Book Festival in Washington, DC on September 6th, 2025.
This year’s adult submission is The Wedding People by Alison Espach.
A propulsive and uncommonly wise novel about one unexpected wedding guest and the surprising people who help her start anew.
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.
The runaway New York Times bestseller. A Today Show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick, New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and a #1 Indie Next Pick
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Guardian, Time, Chicago Tribune Biblioracle, HuffPost, US Magazine, Elle, Real Simple, and Glamour
About the Author
Alison Espach is the author of The Wedding People, an instant New York Times bestseller and a Today show #ReadwithJenna Book Club Pick; The Adults, a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Barnes & Noble Discover pick; and Notes on Your Sudden Disappearance, which was named a best book of 2022 by the Chicago Tribune and NPR. Her short stories and essays have appeared in McSweeney’s, Vogue, Outside, Joyland and other places. She is currently a professor of creative writing at Providence College in Rhode Island
ABOUT THE NATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL
The Library of Congress National Book Festival is an annual literary event that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. The Library of Congress National Book Festival will celebrate its 25th anniversary ” in 2025, featuring the creativity and inspiration of some of the nation’s most gifted authors on September 6th. The event showcases the importance of books and reading. Every year, the Library of Congress asks each state Center for the Book to select a title that represents the state’s literary landscape to highlight at the National Book Festival, these titles are part of the Great Reads From Great Places Initiative. The Rhode Island Center for the Book has chosen The Wedding People and The Book of Whys as the Rhode Island Great Reads for 2025.