FROM THE PUBLISHER

As wry and witty as a night of cosmopolitans with your best girlfriend, Swan Adamson's debut novel introduces an unforgettable heroine in Venus Gilroy -- a woman whose heart is in the right place even if her shoes, her past, and her taste in men are all wrong.

For Venus Gilroy, Marriage Isn't A State...

Twenty-five year old Venus Gilroy is hardly the traditional blushing bride. With two starter marriages behind her, several tattoos, hair the color of sherbert, and a job at an adult video store called Phantastic Phantasy, she's a wedding planner's nightmare. It doesn't help that her fiancé, Tremaynne, is a penniless "alternative media star" whose claim to fame is three months in a tree as an environmental activist...or that her eccentric mother is deep into clown therapy...or that her two fathers -- her dad and his lover, her "faux pa" -- have offered to pay for a luxurious honeymoon at the exclusive Pine Mountain Lodge. There's only one little catch: the dads want to come along.

...It's An Institution.

Now, in the wilds of Idaho, where the country's hottest new spa is surrounded by disgruntled locals, wacky paramilitary troups, and eco-warriors, the honeymoon from hell is just beginning. Venus is mistaken for an erotic Icelandic rock star. Tremaynne is up to something mysterious and probably highly illegal. Her Armani-clad dads are determined to transform their punk princess little girl into a card-carrying, Jackie O Club woman. And a gorgeous Italian prince would give anything for one night alone with Venus. As her idyllic escape morphs into a retreat from anything resembling sanity, it's time for Venus to take a stand and confront her biggest fear of all...growing up...