The Unwedding

“Was she that transparent? Could strangers see how sad she was? How nothing felt right, ever? She straightened her spine. She was not going to give these elegant people her sob story.”

From the moment Ellery enters The Resort at Broken Point, Condie positions her as an outsider. Ellery worries that strangers—in this instance, Ravi and Nina—can sense her depression and loneliness immediately. Ellery’s anxiety about being an outsider informs all her interactions with the other guests and establishes the starting point of her character arc over the course of the narrative.

“There are far too many hard things in this world, she thought. Even beautiful people who married other beautiful people in startlingly beautiful places couldn’t escape them.”

Disillusioned by her divorce, Ellery believes that everyone she meets hides a dark secret inside them. Although the beauty of Big Sur and The Resort at Broken Point often distracts her, she maintains a pessimistic belief that nothing good can last in the world—a perspective that reflects the grief and loneliness she feels as the novel opens.

“Still, she felt both flattered and disconcerted by the invitation. Realizing she was free to say yes to other things—to other men—was dizzying. It felt like a precipice.”

Ellery’s shock and sadness over her unexpected divorce after 20 years of marriage initially defines her outlook on everything. However, as her trip progresses, she realizes that while her loneliness and grief persist, she’s also beginning to find liberation in her sudden singleness, and attempts to step outside her comfort zone while at The Resort. Imagery of cliffs and precipices appear throughout the novel as a symbol of exhilaration and precarity of Ellery’s new beginning.

“But in spite of the artifice of it all—the discussion about timing the announcement, the archness of what Morgan was saying, the cradling of the oh-so-perfect baby bump—it was real.”

Morgan and Maddox are influencers on a fictional social media site called LikeMe who have come to The Resort at Broken Point to film content announcing Morgan’s pregnancy. Ellery initially takes a characteristically pessimistic view of the couple, assuming that their lives are as artificial as their social media presence and positioning them as red herrings in Ben’s murder. However, as she connects with them further, Ellery finds herself able to distinguish between the artifice of their profession and the genuineness of their love for life and each other.

“Other injuries, other faces, the screaming of students. She and Abby, seeing it happen, helpless. Racing to the sides of those who had been hurt, knowing they were too late, hoping, hoping, hoping that they weren’t.”

As Ellery gets drawn deeper into the murders at The Resort at Broken Point, the trauma of the bus accident she survived becomes increasingly disruptive in her thoughts. Condie demonstrates this disruptive trauma in the novel through formal breaks in the narrative in which Ellery’s flashbacks are presented in italics. This formal disruption echoes Ellery’s emotional trauma.

“‘It’s a good thing we’re all cooped up here together.’

‘Is it?’ Nina asked.

‘For murder solving purposes, yes,’ Ravi said. ‘I admit it’s less than ideal for staying alive purposes.’”

As news of the murders spreads around The Resort, Ravi steps into the classic closed circle mystery role of amateur sleuth with enthusiasm. His descriptions of the investigation are often self-referential, pointing to depictions of murder mysteries in books and movies, creating a layer of meta-fiction in Condie’s narrative. In this instance, he points explicitly to the fact that the group is in a closed circle mystery, in which the victims and suspects are isolated together.

“Ellery had a sense of unreality as she looked down at the figure […] Either that’s not real or I’m not; something about this whole situation does not compute.”

Condie suggests that Ellery’s grief and the chaos of the murders at The Resort at Broken Point lead her to lose touch with reality. The fact that Ellery has seen two dead bodies within 24 hours causes a mental break that results in her failing to distinguish between the past, present, and her imagination, highlighting the Trauma of Survivor’s Guilt.

“‘I don’t think we’re going to get any medals,’ Ellery said. ‘We’re actively compromising what might be another murder scene right now.’”

Ellery’s participation in Ravi and Nina’s private investigation evokes traumatic memories of the fatal accident she experienced and the criticism she received for moving students as she tried to save them. As the investigation progresses, Ellery continues to confront her traumatic memories, catalyzing the healing process. 

“She was alone, cut off physically as well as emotionally from the people she loved and the life she knew, and the uncertainty of when she’d get back to them in any way felt untenable. It was bringing back that other time, just over two years ago, when the world was upended.”

Ellery’s lasting trauma—the result of an accident two years prior in which several of her students were killed—defines, in part, her experiences at The Resort. In this passage, the pain of being trapped at The Resort without her children recalls the pain of her involvement in the accident and the loss of her students.

“Grace lifted the bag and wallet from the chair that she’d been using to make it look like the place was saved. Ellery felt flattered, wondering if they’d been saving it for her.”

As her arc progresses, Ellery’s loneliness and isolation begin to shift through her genuine connections with others at The Resort. In this passage, Grace and Gary’s obvious desire to spend time with her counterbalances the rejection she faced earlier from Rachel, Catherine, and other members of the wedding party.

“She would not be one of those people, the ghouls who hung around tragedy, trying to smell it out, hoping to roll in the scent so they could have some of it on them to signal that they were important, too.”

Because Ellery is not a part of the wedding party, she feels like an outsider among the people hoping to solve Ben’s murder. Catherine and Rachel both criticize Ellery for being the type of ghoul Ellery describes in this passage. As a survivor of a fatal accident, Ellery has first-hand experience with people drawn morbidly to tragedies and instinctually rejects the idea of appearing as one herself.

“Ben, having suffered an enormous loss at an early age, seemed to want to say the things and give the gifts while people were still there to receive them.”

Although, like the reader, Ellery never meets Ben, he features prominently in the action of the novel and in her imagination. Ben’s friends speak so highly of him that Ellery feels as if she knows him personally, fueling her investment in solving his murder and pushing the plot forward. In this passage, Ellery points to Ben’s experience of loss as evidence that he would never abandon a loved one with only a text message.

“She had become used to the white-noise constancy of it. It had become a kind of companion—a dangerous one, eroding the landscape around them, keeping the police away, making the terrain slippery and changeable—but a steady one, nonetheless.”

Condie features the drama of the Big Sur landscape across the novel as a symbol of the unpredictable nature of life. Although the storm causes Ellery and the other guests to be stranded at The Resort, Ellery finds the sound of the rain comforting and feels disturbed by the silence when it stops. The constant sound of the rain acts as a symbol of the constant hum of grief to which Ellery has grown accustomed.

“(Ellery wondered if Rachel and the others had cleaned up the lounge after the memorial, or if there were still beer bottles on the table and boxes of baby Ben sweatshirts on the floor.)”

As the novel progresses, the class differences between The Resort at Broken Point’s staff and its wealthy guests grows more dramatic, highlighting the Class Tensions in Luxury Tourism. In this passage, Ellery notices that the wedding party has begun treating the staff as subservient, rather than necessary teammates in an emergency situation.

“‘No ice, no glasses,’ Ravi said glumly, looking at his room-temperature bottle of resort water as they settled into three of the chairs. ‘We’re in the after times now.’”

Like all the guests of The Resort at Broken Point, Ravi expects a certain degree of luxury while on the property, despite the crisis of the murders and the landslide. Here, Ravi pokes fun at the dire circumstances of the storm and the danger of the murders in a characteristic attempt to bring levity to an intense situation.

“The rain might have ceased for the time being, but the path to the trailer bar was alive and shifting. The water had made rivulets in the earth, small canyons, lakes, puddles. Within only a few steps, they had walked on landscapes upon landscapes.”

Throughout the novel, Condie parallels the dramatic landscape of the Big Sur and the Monterrey Peninsula with Ellery’s internal turmoil. In this passage, the large-scale disasters of the rainstorm and the mudslide lead to small-scale disasters on the property that Ellery and the other guests need to navigate. These cascading disasters reflect the unpredictable nature of tragedy in Ellery’s life.

“Ben might have laughed at seeing his own childhood face waving him off on his honeymoon, but also would have recognized the photo, the way his parents weren’t central but were both present in some way.”

Condie uses the matching sweatshirts that Olivia designs with Ben’s face on them as a surprise for the wedding sendoff as a potential clue in Olivia’s disappearance and to reinforce Ellery’s connection to Ben. As Ellery considers the photo of Ben as a baby, Condie emphasizes Ellery’s love of her own children, and her understanding of the impact of child loss on parents.

“These people had known her for only a few days, and they were willing to do more than Luke had been willing to do when she and Ethan had been in the car crash.”

A key moment of Ellery’s character development is her recognition of her ex-husband Luke’s cruel and uncaring behavior throughout their relationship—an epiphany that allows her to accept that their divorce is not her fault. In this passage, Ellery realizes that she is worthy of care and attention, and that Ravi and Nina care for her more than her husband of almost 20 years, underscoring the novel’s thematic interest in The Importance of Maintaining Friendships.

“‘I’ll do that,’ Rachel said. ‘And if you hear any screaming coming from my room, keep yourself safe. Don’t try and save me.’”

Ellery’s struggle with the demons of her past comes to a head in this moment when Rachel implies she’s discovered Ellery’s dark secret: after the accident, Ellery moved an injured student, possibly resulting in the student’s death. The panic Ellery’s experiences at being recognized fully revives her past trauma, causing her to flee the resort and escalate her isolation from the rest of the group.

“Ellery felt that they were at an edge here in the stirring forest, at the swollen pond, with the mother crane and her drowned chicks.”

Throughout the novel, the large-scale art pieces scattered across the resort act as both clues for and a distraction from the central mystery. Ravi’s obsession with finding the stolen art piece leads him to investigate things unrelated to the murders. Ravi’s secondary investigation ultimately intersects with Ellery’s primary one in the novel’s climax when Catherine reveals the role of the missing art piece in Ben’s death.

“Her feet were planted and her shoulders squared. Ellery was reminded of her children when she and Luke had told them about the divorce, the way they had frozen before they shattered.”

Ellery feels blindsided and deeply wounded by the sudden nature of her divorce. In this passage, Condie evidences Ellery’s trauma in the fact that she immediately connects Olivia’s realization that her mother murdered her husband with her own children’s disappointment at learning of her parents’ divorce. Ellery’s trauma causes her to view everything she experiences through the lens of her divorce.

“And now they had come to the point in the murder mystery where, if you left the murderer alone, they killed themselves out of guilt. More likely, in real life, this was the point where if you left the murderer alone a myriad of outcomes was possible.”

Throughout the novel, Ellery and Ravi reference mystery films and literature classics as a way of understanding the chaotic events they’re experiencing. In this passage, Ellery tries to decide whether mystery novel logic applies to real life: ultimately, she decides to abandon Catherine to preserve herself. Ellery’s self-conscious positioning as a mystery heroine helps to save her life.

“‘It’s because you were here alone,’ Andy said. ‘You were the one on the outside, watching. The rest of us were all here with—or for—another person. Or other people.’”

Condie positions Ellery as an outsider throughout the novel: unlike other guests at The Resort, she’s traveling on her own and unused to luxury vacations. Ellery’s loneliness is compounded by the fact that this trip should have been a wedding anniversary celebration. As Ellery begins to heal, she’s able to view her divorce as a new beginning in her life. Similarly, Andy’s perspective shifts Ellery’s solitary, outsider status from a negative to a positive, framing it as the thing that enables her to see details others miss.