Relationships are awful. They'll kill you, right up to the point where they start saving your life.

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 product of their mother's first marriage to a dashing Frenchman, Eloise has everything Paul and Alice have ever wanted: a seemingly endless trust fund, model good looks, an international life of luxury and their mother's unconditional love.

Meanwhile, Alice is in her thirties, stuck in a dead-end job and mired in a rather predictable, though enjoyable, affair with her married boss, and Paul, who still isn't speaking to their mother after their father's death three years ago, has upended his life to move to Philadelphia for his tenured track professor boyfriend, who has recently started looking at other, younger men and talking wistfully about 'opening up'.

As the estranged clan gathers, and Eloise's walk down the aisle approaches, Grant Ginder's bitingly funny, slyly witty and surprisingly tender story brings to vivid, hilarious life the power of family, and the complicated ways we hate the ones we love the most.

(P) 2022 Macmillan Audio