3 Fantastically Awesome Books BJ Thinks You Need to Read: May 2025

The Wedding People by Alison Espach I read this one for a  book club and never got the chance to discuss it. Phoebe arrives at a fancy historical hotel in Newport, it’s where she’s always dreamed of staying, but the thing is she is coming here to kill herself. Her husband has left her, her career as a professor is on a downward swing, and she checks in to the hotel. But when she arrives she sees that a wedding is happening at the hotel this week, hers is the only room where someone who is not a guest to the wedding is staying. In the elevator she meets the bride and is asked whether she is a guest of the groom and she simply replies “Nope, I am here to kill myself.” Later in the evening the bride comes to check on Phoebe and then sits down to confide in her.  Over the course of the next few days the bride confides more and more until she starts to invite Phoebe to the pre-wedding events. It’s a very cool story of realizing that you are more than your failures, and a story of finding family in unexpected places. Loved it.

 

The Unseen World by Liz Moore Ada is a child of a very famous scientist and professor in the 1980s.  He is a single father and is raising her on his own with the help of his community of fellow scientists. When dementia settles upon him she realizes that her father isn’t who she knew him to be. She slowly learns who he really is, and of course because dementia has settled in she simply cannot get straight answers from him. He left her a code on a computer disk that leads to the answers to all her questions about him and she cannot manage to figure it out. She spends her life well into adulthood trying to figure it out, until she finally does. It’s an incredible mystery and absolutely fascinating. And it's really not what you think it'll be, and that's what makes this book awesome. 
 

An Inspiring Recovery by Neil McCarthy  This is a very honest and brave memoir by a man who endured a psychotic break when he was 19 and in college. He had everything going for him, the grades, the bod, the friends, and then the sexual abuse he endured as a young child caught up to him in a spectacularly awful way, hence the break and the diagnosis of bipolar.  He has no idea how to manage his condition, and struggles to figure it out all while trying to finish college and be a young professional and figure out his life at the same time.  He takes us through what it was like to learn to manage his condition. He detailed his ups and downs, his successes and failures, and how he learned his own strategies to manage his condition but to also accept himself and his condition. This was an incredible story and I sincerely hope that more people with bipolar who are recovering from childhood trauma get their hands on this book. This book is full of hope, and it’s full of “You’re not alone, you can do it, here’s how I did it.” Very well done.