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Prudence Malone is married. Maybe not happily, but still married. And there’s really nothing wrong with the marriage, it’s just—dead. So when she goes to Ann Arbor, Michigan, for a homecoming at Michigan State and accidentally meets up with her old college sweetheart, Matt, Prudence sees nothing wrong with having a one-time fling with her ex-boyfriend. When Matt comes up with the mistaken idea that Prudence’s husband is dead, she doesn’t see any reason to correct him. Nothing will come of this, and she’ll go home to her husband, Reilly, who will never know . . . .
It works out perfect in theory, but when Matt asks Prudence to marry him and she says yes, she ends up with a huge problem on her hands. What is she going to do about her still very much alive husband? Reilly is too good a person to just dump, so Prudence feels she needs to find him a new wife.
A newspaper ad later, Prudence is interviewing prospective women to be Reilly’s next wife. But it isn’t as easy as she thought it’d be. Sorting through weirdos, gold diggers, man-haters, and just-plain-desperate women while balancing a husband and a fiancé is down-right tricky.
THE WIFE OF REILLY is the first chick-lit I’ve read about a married woman trying to find herself. I was rather disgusted with Prudence for cheating on her husband, and then, after getting engaged to Matt, refusing relations with her husband because she’d be cheating on her fiancé.
THE WIFE OF REILLY is well-written, but the story-line made the heroine very
unlikable to me and I really didn’t care what happened to her. The
author has several good endorsements on the book, but in good
conscience, I can’t endorse this book. If you are looking for a funny
chick lit, look away from THE WIFE OF REILLY.
Reviewed by Laura V. Hilton
for The Road to Romance
May 31, 2004
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