REVIEW: The People We Hate at the Wedding by Grant Ginder

By -


”Audible
Synopsis

Paul and Alice’s half-sister Eloise is getting married! In London! There will be fancy hotels, dinners at “it” restaurants and a reception at a country estate complete with tea lights and embroidered cloth napkins.
They couldn’t hate it more.

The People We Hate at the Wedding is the story of a less than perfect family. Donna, the clan’s mother, is now a widow living in the Chicago suburbs with a penchant for the occasional joint and more than one glass of wine with her best friend while watching House Hunters International. Alice is in her thirties, single, smart, beautiful, stuck in a dead-end job where she is mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss. Her brother Paul lives in Philadelphia with his older, handsomer, tenured track professor boyfriend who’s recently been saying things like “monogamy is an oppressive heteronormative construct,” while eyeing undergrads. And then there’s Eloise. Perfect, gorgeous, cultured Eloise. The product of Donna’s first marriage to a dashing Frenchman, Eloise has spent her school years at the best private boarding schools, her winter holidays in St. John and a post-college life cushioned by a fat, endless trust fund. To top it off, she’s infuriatingly kind and decent. (Via Goodreads)


Review

This one is pretty easy to sum up, The People We Hate at the Wedding is a really shitty book. It is a pointless, rambling book with an uninteresting plot filled exclusively with unlikable characters. There are very good pointless books (e.g. Emma) and very good books filled almost completely with unlikable characters (Wuthering Heights). I am sure there are even a few good books with uninteresting plots out there! However, when you combine them all you end up with a worthless waste of time.

I remember being very interested in this book based on the cover, title, and brief publisher summary. The cover and title were especially effective in drawing my attention. None of the characters are likable, the one that came closest was Eloise but even she was annoyingly clueless. The plot sounded good in the description but it is paper-thin and ultimately pointless with no conclusion what so ever. A classic case of a product not living up to its marketing.

I had listened to this book once before a year ago but had no solid memories of it so when I decided to re-listen and review my entire audiobook library this was towards the top of my list of books to re-listen. Now that I have re-listened I am completely flummoxed as to why I did not return this last year. At least I have come out of this experience with a previously forsaken Audible credit.


Comments

Post a Comment