'Wife 22': Taking the tally on an unhappy marriage

So you've been married for what seems like forever. You still love your spouse, but things have gotten, let's say, a bit stale.

You see a notice in your spam folder and, well, it changes your life. Who knew? Not Alice Buckle, the protagonist in Melanie Gideon's debut novel, Wife 22.

What Buckle finds is an invitation to participate in a marriage survey. Better yet, an anonymous marriage survey. All she has to do is answer a caseworker's questions. His name: Researcher 101. Her research name: Wife 22.

And away Alice Buckle goes, admitting to him, a complete stranger, her life's secrets as she answers his ever-growing list of probing questions. Can a little flirting turn into an obsession? She soon finds out.

The survey works. So does the book.

Library Journal puts Wife 22 in the same chick-lit world as Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary and Anna Maxted's Getting Over It.

It's better, mainly because Gideon's story is not just about a tired marriage or the worn-out drama of a single girl's life. No, she touches on everything from family life in the 21st-century to Facebook friends and the painful act of "Googling" yourself.

Cleverly she breaks up her chapters with Google searches, Yahoo forums, Facebook postings, along with e-mail and tweet exchanges that read so true it's hard to believe they're fiction. Maybe they aren't.

Throughout, Buckle gives the answers to Researcher 101's questions without listing what the questions are. But you know.

The book moves along quickly because of one question that needs to be answered: Do Wife 22 and Researcher 101 ever get together?

You'll be surprised.