Right off the bat, I have to confess that I originally bought Grant Ginder’s The People We Hate at the Wedding on somewhat of a whim and read it for the first time back in 2017, and I’m so glad that I did, because this ended up being a really great book, in my opinion. I honestly hadn’t even heard of this book until I saw it at Target one day. As soon as I read the plot synopsis that’s on the cover, I immediately knew that this book was right up my alley. I thought about whether or not I wanted to buy it for several hours, and I bought it later that same day; which is something I don’t necessarily do when it comes to books that are written by authors that I’ve never even heard of. I’m much more likely to buy books rather spontaneously if they’re written by authors that I’m already familiar with and have read some of their other books. I’m also incredibly ashamed to admit that this review was originally written for the most part after I read the book for the first time back in 2017; but because I find the proofreading part of writing rather tedious, I never got around to proofreading and posting this review while the details of the book were still fresh in my mind. I finally decided to reread the book recently after finding out that Amazon made a movie adaptation of the book; which I’m planning to watch now that I’ve reread the book. That being said, here are my thoughts on the book.
Despite what the book’s title might suggest, The People We Hate at the Wedding is ultimately not first and foremost about a wedding. At its core, this book is about a dysfunctional family; and the problems that they have, with both each other and in their own personal lives. Eloise’s wedding simply serves as the backdrop for the conflict within the family. I have to say that while I absolutely love the title The People We Hate at the Wedding, I still think that it’s the book title equivalent of a clickbait headline for an article on the internet since the titular wedding plays such a small role in the book in the grand scheme of things. However, I still think it’s a pretty clever book title that was definitely effective when it came to getting my attention as I was looking around at Target and originally discovered this book.
While I personally loved this book, I don’t think that this book is necessarily for everybody, especially if you’re not a fan of books where pretty much all of the characters are rather unlikable people. Personally, I honestly love books, TV shows, and movies that feature unlikable characters, as long as the characters are written with the intention of them being unlikable, and they’re well written, and it's handled well by the author. When it comes to TV shows, my favorite comedy is definitely It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and all of the characters on that show are all truly terrible people. If characters come across as being unlikable due to bad writing, then I usually end up not liking the book all that much. For example, I don’t think that Ana Steele from E.L. James’ Fifty Shades trilogy is meant to be an incredibly annoying and unlikable, she just comes across that way due to terrible writing. That being said, I did think that Ana came across as being much more likable in Grey: Fifty Shades of Grey as Told by Christian, even though the book was still horribly written.
For the most part, I felt like Ginder did a great job of writing the characters in such a way that while they weren’t the most likable people, I was still emotionally invested in the characters’ lives, and I still cared about most of the characters in the book. As for who my favorite character in The People We Hate at the Wedding is, my favorite character is definitely Paul. In my opinion, Paul was the breakout star of the book, and he really stole the entire book. He was almost always one of the biggest highlights of every scene that he was in throughout the book, even if the chapter was written from a different character’s point of view. I felt like Paul was constantly doing or saying something genuinely funny, either to another character; or his internal narrative. I found the parts of the book that focused on Paul’s job as a therapist at a clinic that uses immersion therapy techniques to help people overcome their phobias especially interesting. I’ve had to work with several managers at my job over the years that I thought were very difficult to please, so I was definitely able to relate to the fact that Paul had a really hard time dealing with his supervisor being rather challenging for him to work with. Fortunately, none of the supervisors that I’ve had a hard time dealing with at my job over the years have ever made me so mad that I did something that got me in a lot of trouble; or fired like Paul ultimately did.
When it comes to who the most unlikable character in the book is, I definitely think that the answer is going to vary from reader to reader, but I personally thought that Paul’s boyfriend, Mark, was the most unlikable character in the book. Honestly, I already didn’t like Mark very much, and he was the only character in the book that I definitely didn’t care about one bit before I got to the first chapter that’s written from his point of view. Reading the first chapter in the book that’s written from Mark’s point of view made me hate him even more. Mark really seemed like a complete and total asshole; and a bit of a sleazebag, as far as I’m concerned. I couldn’t really understand what Paul saw in Mark that had ever made him want to date Mark in the first place. The fact that Mark apparently developed a sudden desire for him and Paul to have an open relationship came across to me as him simply wanting to have Paul’s permission to just sleep around with other men. As I was reading the book, I kept hoping that Paul would eventually just break up with Mark, so I was rather disappointed when it was ultimately Mark who ended the relationship.
Given the way both Paul and Alice talked about their half-sister, Eloise, at the beginning of the book when they were discussing her wedding invitations and the way they continued to talk about her throughout the book before she was formally introduced, I was really expecting Eloise to either end up being even worse of a person than they made her out to be or to quite possibly, ironically end up being the most likable character in the book. Ultimately, while I definitely don’t think that she’s the nicest character in the book, I didn’t think that she was nearly as bad of a person as Paul and Alice made her out to be. After all, I thought that it was pretty nice of Eloise to not only pay for Alice to stay in a fancy hotel room (Including room service) but also to try and help Alice get a new job because she thought that Alice might be happier if she left her current job to take a job somewhere else.
On the other hand, it was pretty horrible for Eloise to report a fake scandal to tabloids about somebody; simply because they were questioning the legitimacy of the charitable organization she worked for. While she also acted rather bitchy towards Mark at one point in the book, I honestly loved the way she acted towards him considering how much I despised Mark as a character.
I really liked the character Alice, and her storyline for the most part. It was very interesting to see what it was like for her to have an affair with her boss who was married, making her the “other woman”. Alice definitely came across as being a rather unhappy person, and I felt like Ginder did a great job of portraying Alice as having a bit of a self-destructive streak that I thought was rather interesting, especially when it comes to the fact that she apparently had a habit of crushing pills into powder and then snorting them to get high.
That being said, Alice’s reaction to Eloise paying for her to stay in a fancy hotel room really frustrated the hell out of me. I thought it was pretty rude of her to order a bunch of room service with no intention of eating or using the things that she ordered, simply for the sake of spending Eloise’s money. I thought that was pretty passive-aggressive of her to do that, and that was pretty much the only part of the book where I didn’t like Alice all that much.
While I definitely didn’t hate Paul, Alice, and Eloise’s mother, Donna, I didn’t really like her all that much either, simply because I thought that she was pretty much the most forgettable character in the book. Plus, I thought that the chapters where Donna was spending time with her ex, Henrique, stood out as being particularly dull compared to the rest of the book.
The overall pacing of the book was handled very well for the most part. The nonlinear nature in which Ginder wrote The People We Hate at the Wedding is one of the main things that contributed to the pacing of the book's overall plot moving along at the right pace.
That being said, while I enjoyed the non-linear structure of the book for the most part, there were a few times throughout the book where I felt like Ginder could have handled that aspect of the book a little bit better. The one chapter of the book that I had the most problems with the book’s non-linear storytelling format was the chapter where Paul gets into a big fight with his supervisor, Dr. Goulding, and subsequently attacks him, which leads to him getting fired. The way Ginder kept switching back and forth between the fight between Paul and Dr. Goulding, and a conversation between Paul and Mark that had taken place the night before throughout the chapter really made that chapter of the book hard to follow. I think Ginder switching back and forth between the two conversations would have worked a lot better if this were a TV show or a movie, but when it comes to Ginder intercutting back and forth between the two different conversations, I don’t think that particular editing style for that chapter of the book translated very well in book format. I thought that chapter was really hard to follow what was happening throughout the chapter due to how it was edited together.
Aside from my issues with that particular chapter of the book, the only other complaint that I have about The People We Hate at the Wedding is the fact that I felt like Ginder stopped specifying who was talking too soon in the characters’ introductory scenes at the beginning of the book. Because I was just being introduced to these characters for the first time, and their personalities hadn’t really had the chance to be fully established to the reader yet, it was kind of hard for me to keep track of which character was talking at the time. There were also a few other times later on in the book where I felt like it was kind of challenging at times to keep track of which character was talking or which character was doing something during a conversation. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that a writer needs to specify who’s talking every time a character says something in a book, it would get very annoying after a while if a writer did that. However, I felt like the fact that the conversations between the characters tended to start approaching a Gilmore Girls-level of rapid-fire speed, combined with things being mentioned in the descriptive prose during conversations throughout the book made some parts of the book somewhat challenging to follow, requiring me to read some of the conversations between the characters multiple times to clear up my confusion.
Ginder definitely could have done a little bit better of a job of writing the conversations that moved at a faster pace compared to the majority of the conversations that take place throughout the book, but that being said, I thought that a lot of the dialogue throughout the entire book was pretty clever. Honestly, aside from Emma Chase’s, Jennifer Probst’s, and Christina Lauren’s books, which are several of my favorite authors within the romance genre, The People We Hate at the Wedding is a rare example of the dialogue itself between the characters throughout the book being one of the things that I like most about a book. Usually, I tend to appreciate the dialogue between characters on a TV show or in a movie a lot more than I appreciate the dialogue in a book. As a small side note, I would just like to mention that the mood-reader part of me has really wanted to get back to reading some books within the romance genre. It has admittedly been over a year since I’ve read a romance novel, and I have to confess that there’s a part of me that’s really been missing the genre lately, but I digress.
As for my thoughts on the ending of the book, I felt like the book ended on a rather fitting note. I was really happy to see the characters at least starting to work through some of the issues that they had as a family. I’m honestly glad that Ginder didn’t have their problems all entirely resolved and wrapped up in a neat, tidy bow at the end of the book. In my opinion, it wouldn’t have been very realistic if they had completely worked through all of their problems by the end of the book. When it comes to real life, it can take years for a family to work through the issues that they have with each other, and I feel like Ginder’s writing for the end of the book reflected real-life family conflict, which is something that I really liked and appreciated about this book. That being said, the only problem that I have with the book’s ending is that I feel like Eloise’s actions at the end of the book kind of came out of nowhere to a certain degree, and I feel like her last-minute hesitation about getting married to Ollie should have been set up a little bit more. I also feel like Ollie is the one character in the book that could have benefitted from getting some more character development than he got. I also think that Ginder could have fleshed out Eloise and Ollie’s relationship a little bit more than he did, and perhaps that could have helped Eloise’s actions at the end of the book make more sense to the reader. That being said, even though I think Eloise getting cold feet about going through with the wedding could have been set up a little bit better, I still thought that the conversation between Paul and Eloise at the end of the book was one of the best scenes in the entire book, especially because the book is ultimately first and foremost about their family being very dysfunctional, instead of being about the titular wedding.
All things considered, The People We Hate at the Wedding truly is an amazing find and a real gem of a book. I’m so glad that I discovered this book and bought it. While I don’t think this book is necessarily for everybody because almost all the characters are unlikable, Ginder did a phenomenal job of writing the book in such a way that I could like and care about almost all of the characters, except for Mark, who I absolutely hate, even though none of the characters were very good people. The characters were, for the most part, all very compelling and well-written. As I said earlier, one of the few problems that I have with the book is the fact that there are a few times when the book’s nonlinear format didn’t quite translate very well for a story that’s being told in the form of a book, rather than as a TV show or movie. Plus, while I loved the dialogue in this book for the most part, some of the conversations were a little challenging to follow, and it could get a little confusing which character was talking when the conversations started moving at a rapid-fire rate. Other than that, as someone who’s a big fan of TV shows, movies, and books dealing with family conflict, I can’t emphasize enough how much I enjoyed this book.
That being said, my final score for The People We Hate at the Wedding is 9 out of 10.
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