Synopsis: This Book is Not About Mermaids

26-year-old Tammy Joyce left her high school sweetheart at the altar five years ago, an impulsive choice that has set the rest of her life down a course she'd never imagined. Now, as a habitual-liar college dropout, she lives in a tiny studio apartment in Tampa, working during the day as a mermaid in the Weeki Wachee Springs mermaid show and spending time at night with her boyfriend, George St. James, obscenely wealthy heir to a department store fortune. They're an odd match, but mostly it works.

At the start of the novel, George has just proposed to Tammy and she is in the middle of a pregnancy scare. Under the impression that she is knocked up, George's family tentatively approves of the union, and so when it turns out that Tammy is not pregnant after all, George and she make the catalyst decision to pretend she still is in order to keep the blessing. Shortly afterward, George's mother decides that the wedding will happen in two weeks time ("before you start to show, of course!") and, influenced by the news that Tammy's parents couldn't possibly drop everything and come to Tampa in that short time, it will take place in her hometown of Sarasota.

Combine a fake pregnancy, a shotgun wedding of opulent proportions, mysterious phone calls from a woman with no apparent name but "Friend", and all the people Tammy thought she'd left for good when she ran, and it's going to be a very crazy October.