Once I’d read Bridget Jones’s Diary I was dying for similar novels, but the term “chick lit” didn’t exist yet and I had no way of searching for them. (There were of course other books out there, but they were pretty much all in England, and I didn’t discover them until later.) So it was pure luck that led me to find a copy of The Making of Minty Malone, by Isabel Wolff, in a tiny bookstore in Spain of all places. The book begins with the internal monologue of a rather hyperactive bride-to-be, who gives a great deal of background information about herself and her fiancé before heading to the church, where he states emphatically that he can’t marry her. Minty goes through expected and unexpected stages of grief and recovery, and the whole thing is very funny and sweet. It’s another of my favorites, and I’ve read it dozens of times. (It’s also Ms. Wolff’s second book, so you can see how behind I was. Not to worry, though, I quickly made up for lost time.)