This is a story about what happens when you are twenty-four years old and it is 1999 and you are quite certain that everyone on the planet has been invited to super-fun New Year's Eve orgies, except you, because you were too busy making plans for the end of the world — courtesy of God or militiamen or your best friend and her ridiculous wedding in the middle of the South Pacific. This is a story about what happens when you think and truly mean things like "I don't care if the world ends, as long as it ends before this stupid wedding."

There is sex, albeit awkward and tentative. There are drugs, however illegal. There is very little rock and roll, but there is, of course, a wedding, and possibly a heroine: Betsy Nilssen, who, daily, finds herself in the sort of Manhattan workplace frequently filled with fashion models, few of whom have spilled milk on their jeans. She has a best friend named Bridget, and all Betsy wants is to escape the coming apocalypse by fleeing with Bridget to New Zealand, where they could kayak through fjords and make out with surfers.

But two things happen: Bridget deserts Betsy — if by that we mean that Bridget accepts her boyfriend's proposal of marriage — and Betsy meets the man of her quite literal dreams, possibly the only person who might assuage the terrifying fact of Bridget's wedding while simultaneously distracting her from the end of the world — er, year.

This is a story about the risks and the rewards of becoming the next and better you, whoever that person might be. It is a story about what happens when you love tremendously and desperately and occasionally unwisely. And it is a story of that one friend: your phone-a-friend with the definition of a tangelo at the ready, the one you call when the world is ending, the one you need, finally, more than any other person on the planet.

"Blogger Vadino (bunnyshop.org) does a good job in her first novel of capturing the inner life of a chronic worrier as she navigates late '90s New York City. The reluctant assistant editor of a dot-com fashion magazine, Betsey Nilssen stocks up on freeze-dried foods, convinced the world is going to end on January 1, 2000. But Betsey's busy, pre-apocalypse best friend Bridget Callahan is planning her perfect wedding, and office crush Ryan Wells finally returns Betsey's affections. Though Betsey is crazy about him, and he seems devoted, his having just split with his longtime girlfriend causes some doubts that Bridget exploits. Bridget, meanwhile, is dispassionate about fianc James, which causes Betsey to wonder who has the right attitude when it comes to being in love. Vadino peppers her prose with unmistakable and convincing period references (the Discman, Zima, the X-Files), including a quick (and heartbreaking) line about being disoriented downtown until spotting the World Trade Center. Office politics at the scrappy e-mag run true, and while Betsey's neurotic obsessing could be pruned, Vadino gets into her head while still making her sympathetic, especially as her fixation on Ryan threatens to send her off the deep end. The novel's bittersweet tone carries through to a satisfying conclusion." Publishers Weekly (Starred Review) (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

"For many years I have marveled at Diane Vadino's ability to take the plainest little sentence and extend and twist it into something finer, funnier, revealing, and sad. Like this one from the book you are holding right now and ought to buy immediately: 'Or maybe this is all a fabrication, a way to soften the fact that she is sashimi at Nobu and I am Stouffer's macaroni and cheese and that this is less an illuminating metaphor than it is an accurate description of what we both ate for dinner last night.' That's just one of the beguiling double helixes that make up the DNA of this book: a zippy-smart, bitter-funny read with a beautiful, accomplished novel hidden in its genetic code, expressing itself like a sudden bright blue eye in a family of brown-eyed children — at the most surprising times." John Hodgman, author of The Areas of My Expertise

"Diane Vadino is a writer of enormous gifts, all of which are on display here, in her brilliant debut: a keen intelligence and wit, an amazing imagination, and an incisive understanding of human beings and the dilemmas — fantastical and mundane — in which they entangle themselves. She is that rarity: a young artist able to offer wisdom without pretension, inspiration without inhibition. I have no doubt this is the beginning of a long and wonderful career." Nicholas Christopher, author of The Bestiary and A Trip to the Stars

"Diane Vadino is a warm, funny, and talented young writer. In her terrific first novel she transports us to theroller-coaster ride that is single life in the city — pleasingly paced, perfectly detailed scenes replete with Diane von Furstenberg dresses, meatloaf sandwiches, a job in media, credit card debt thanks to various bridesmaid honors, and crushing heartbreak at a downtown RadioShack. Never again will I reflect on those excruciatingly embarrassing moments of obsessive young love and feel alone." Jenny Minton, author of The Early Birds

"Fabulously entertaining, insightful, and touching in its telling of a young woman finding her own voice, her own path in life. Diane Vadino is an exceptional new discovery in fiction!" Kirsten Lobe, author of French Trysts: Secrets of a Courtesan and the bestselling Paris Hangover

Diane Vadino was the inaugural main staff person at McSweeney's. She has spoken with members of the Beastie Boys and Metallica for Spin magazine, conducted interviews with fashion designers in pidgin Italian for Surface, and applied perfume to passersby for Allure; her writing on film and design now regularly appears in Nylon, I.D., and other publications. She has also worked as a waitress, Daily Show intern, and professional shampooer. Born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey, she now lives, mostly, in Brooklyn.