An Ideal Wife

May 3, 2010
Townley’s latest novel based on an Oscar Wilde play (The Importance of Being Married) is her most plausible and engaging yet. Series heroine Jessica Wild has a cool £4 million in the bank, but she and husband, Max Wainwright, still work hard running his ad agency. Tough times have hit, and Max is in desperate need of a big new account, specifically that of Chester Rydall, Jessica’s would-be stepfather, who happens to run a very large bank. When Chester decides to run an ethics audit of his employees as a PR stunt, Max subjects his company to the same “Ideal Company” ploy. Meanwhile, Jess toils at becoming the ideal wife, to generally unpleasant results, such as landing Max in the hospital with a broken leg and a flirty nurse. A blitz of subplots and a colorful assortment of supporting characters help push things along. Even if this suffers from the same sorts of overblown misunderstandings and coincidences that are as much a staple of the genre as designer clothes, it’s still a delight, and Jess has finally achieved lovable heroine status.

April 15, 2010
Jessica Wild and her husband, Max, are back in the third installment in Townleys Wild trilogy. As the story begins, Jessica and Max have been happily married for a year. During a discussion at dinner with his in-laws, Max makes an offhand comment about Jessica being the perfect wife, and Jessica begins to wonder if she really is or if Max is just being polite. Jessica decides to embark on Project Perfect Wife, a vigorous course of self-improvement, involving everything from learning to cook to being generous with her time, to help her become the ideal wife that Max thinks she is. But with her old nemesis skulking around, waiting for her to slip up, Jessica finds it harder than ever to be perfect, which forces her to consider that perhaps less-than-perfect is actually ideal. Jessica Wilds fans will be happy to see her return in Townleys sweet and cheery novel.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)