DIARY OF A MAD BRIDE

Amy Sarah Thomas, a magazine editor, is going to marry Stephen Stewart, a computer programmer—that is, if planning the wedding doesn't kill the romance. Told in diary form over the course of a year, with many iterations of a 70-point Things-to-Do list, Wolf's first novel seems determined to provoke an epidemic of elopements. The pre-wedding jitters are endless: obscenely expensive shoes and humiliating dresses, in-laws even more upsetting than one's own parents and siblings, bitchy co-workers and a stoned caterer, and the inevitable onslaught of redundant kitchen gadgets. At moments, there's an antic charm at work here, and the narcissistic Gram is a deliciously insidious little old lady, but Amy's narrative voice is more predictable and less funny than she seems to think. She's absolutely, positively never going to get married—and the next thing you know, she's engaged. She's absolutely, positively going to keep her name—until she decides to change it. There won't be chicken on the wedding menu, no way—and guess what? Punctuated by gift cards, thank-you notes and line drawings, this breezy novel emits plenty of hot air, but until the rhapsodic last scene, there's little bliss to enchant brides-to-be. (Jan.)