Kat Stoddard

An artist attends his wealthy ex-wife’s Cape Cod wedding with a chaotic young writer as his plus one, resulting in an increasingly complicated love triangle over the course of seven days. 

Tess wants nothing more than her upcoming society wedding to overshadow the failure of her first marriage. Her new fiancé, an old family friend, is nothing like her first husband, working class painter Peter. Her relationship with Peter was passionate, but unraveled quickly and ended in heartbreak. Tess has put that chapter of her life firmly behind her.  

Peter hasn’t seen Tess since he got out of rehab five years earlier, so he’s shocked when he receives an invitation to her wedding. But he’s moved on too. Now an adjunct art professor at Hunter College, Peter has achieved financial stability and maintained his sobriety. Seeing Tess one more time could bring him the closure he craves. And it wouldn’t hurt to show up with a handsome younger man—recent acquaintance Mitch—either. 

Midwestern transplant Mitch, waiter and aspiring writer, can’t believe his luck when an attractive artist offers to bring him to an exclusive wedding. Not only is this sure to provide inspiration for the novel he’s longing to write, it could help him finally embrace his own queerness. He’s ready to be swept off his feet during a whirlwind week in New England. What he’s not bargained on is developing serious feelings for both Peter and Peter’s ex—Tess, the bride. Peter and Tess have complex desires of their own, and Mitch is dangerously close to uncovering them.

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With her fast and funny debut novel, Baltimore author Kat Stoddard proposes an update of the 1940 comedy classic The Philadelphia Story. (Grant! Hepburn! Stewart!). The gist: A high-class Cape Cod wedding goes DEFCON 1 when the bride’s ex brings a troublesome plus-one. Stoddard updates the action with queer representation and a fractal approach to love triangles.

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Weddings are rarely simple affairs—something that this debut novel by Kat Stoddard knows all too well. Whether or not you’re actually spending a summer weekend at a stuffy Cape Cod affair, you’ll want to RSVP yes to Tess’s nuptials—well, her second set—because in this modern take on The Philadelphia Story, she invites her ex husband Peter, who not only attends but brings as his date a younger man who complicates things for them both. Grant Ginder calls it, “a keen examination of love in all its modern and messy complexities.” Regret this one at your own peril.

Advance Praise for WASP’S NEST

While it may take a nod from The Philadelphia Story, Wasp’s Nest stands on its own as a hugely engaging comedy of manners. The prose is crystalline and the dialogue is screen worthy, but what’s most impressive is Kat Stoddard’s gift for digging deep into her characters’ souls and dissecting their desires. The result is a keen examination of love in all its modern and messy complexities and a tremendously entertaining debut.

Grant Ginder, author of So Old, So Young

From the moment I opened Wasp’s Nest it was impossible to put down, and I missed the characters as soon as I closed it. Alternating among three perspectives of an endearingly atypical love triangle, Stoddard has created an exquisitely layered masterpiece—not unlike an actual wasp’s nest. The novel pulses with anticipation and personality from start to end, with sharp, vivid prose, witty dialogue, and cutting insights on class, relationships, and the ways in which we hide from ourselves. The tension between these fully rendered and utterly human characters left me tearing through this gorgeous and tender portrait of young love. Rooney-esque and compulsively readable. I can’t wait for whatever Stoddard does next.

Emily J. Smith, author of Nothing Serious

In Wasp’s Nest, a struggling artist brings a fake boyfriend to his rich ex-wife’s second wedding, kicking off seven days of crackling dialogue, bad decisions, and feelings too big to ignore. Kat Stoddard writes with surgical precision, laying bare what love costs when desire, history, and pride collide. Brutally honest and beautifully done—I didn’t want it to end.

Kate Broad, author of Greenwich

Old grievances and new attachments surface over the week before Tess Lowell’s second wedding. Set amid the rituals of wealth, the novel follows a small constellation of characters as they circle one another in a shifting landscape. What begins as a return to familiarity becomes something less stable when Tess’s ex-husband arrives, accompanied by a young man whose presence unsettles the balance of the house. In this novel, Kat Stoddard masterfully explores the ways people construct and revise their own narratives, and in the complexities of human connection. In what happens when all the apparatus of intimacy gives way; what remains, and what cannot be easily resolved.

Sarah Blakley-Cartwright, author of Alice Sadie Celine