What a sce­nario! Any­one who attends a wed­ding after read­ing Love Bomb will be think­ing about this unique and inven­tive read.

A wed­ding is tak­ing place at the bride’s child­hood home in a small bucol­ic New Jer­sey town. The diverse guest list includes ex-wives, step fam­i­lies, psy­chi­a­trists, Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders staff, ex-mil­i­tary men and some famous celebri­ties. Enter a gun-tot­ing gas-masked woman dressed in a beau­ti­ful wed­ding gown, albeit with white com­bat boots on, and wield­ing a bomb trig­ger. She takes the guests hostage and an absurd and wit­ty satire of mod­ern life and morals ensues.

Each guest gropes with the ques­tion of whether she is after them and why, and who she is. Their back sto­ries and reac­tions to the ter­ror unfold and are told with humor and pathos. Good and bad mar­riages, unre­quit­ed loves, mod­ern par­ent­ing, fame, and the ran­dom­ness of vio­lence and death are all explored and exploit­ed. The read­er is hooked.

Helen Burns, the bride’s moth­er, is an astute, kind, and intel­li­gent woman who has seen much in her life. She over­sees, observes, and tries to take a

calm con­trolled approach in a room of huge egos, con­flicts, war­ring fam­i­lies, and just plain fright­ened bath­room-seek­ing adults and cry­ing chil­dren. She repeat­ed­ly tries to con­nect with the hostage tak­er, call off the clam­or­ing psy­chi­a­trists, dif­fuse the sit­u­a­tion, and sal­vage what she can of her daughter’s wed­ding day.

A SWAT team is even­tu­al­ly called into action and the author pro­vides much well-researched infor­ma­tion on police maneu­vers, lin­go, and tac­tics. The action brings an answer to the always asked, ​“Why did she do it?”

This is a hilar­i­ous and heart­break­ing nov­el that is both truth­ful and out­landish. Lisa Zeidner’s Love Bombemploys real­i­ty, as well as heart, to say so much about mod­ern relationships.