FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE

Josephine "Josie" Flynn is a latter-day Bridget Jones, but without the cuteness, the sardonic humor or the wry introspection that made Ms. Jones so lovable (and her story so profitable). In this novel by bestselling English author Matthews, Josie is newly single and en route from London to her American cousin's wedding in New York, when she meets Matt Jarvis, an aspiring rock journalist who captures her attention and asks for a date as soon as their plane touches down. When they just miss each other at the appointed restaurant, madness ensues as Josie's ex-husband decides to jet to the wedding to win her back, and Matt becomes entangled with a publicist for a regrettable boy band, which covers the Beatles but doesn't even know who they were. There are moments of comedy and others of introspection in Matthews's book about the single life and how singletons strive to overcome their lot (often, it seems, by attending weddings, even ones to which they haven't been invited). Despite some humorous inventions (such as the Conversation Termination Sequence, an escape hatch from endless phone calls with her bodily functions–obsessed mother) and melancholy revelations ("somehow she was going to have to let the barriers down again, otherwise no one would ever get inside her protective shell to find the real Josie hiding there"), Matthews mostly fails to mine a deeper meaning from the characters and situations she creates as she entertains her readers with serendipitous trysts and near-misses. Still, Josie, unlike Bridget, never carps about her weight, and for that women readers can be thankful. (May)