Book BIN Tuesday -- The Ideal Wife

I'm on a bit of a Mary Balogh kick these days. Nothing like a big, juicy historical to dive into on a lazy summer day. So I'm pretty chuffed that her early books are being re-released, since I missed them the first time around.

I started reading Balogh somewhere in the middle of the Slightly series, and of course had to go back and read them in order, followed by the Simply series. Now, I'm hunting down her other books, so it's very nice to see her earlier works being re-released. Makes the search a bit easier. :)

I just finished The Tangled Web tonight, and have Web of Love on hold at the library, but I'll have to stop at the bookstore and pick up The Ideal Wife this week as well. Here's the blurb:

When Miles Ripley, Earl of Severn, learns that his mother and sisters are about to descend upon him in London, he is in despair. For they have a bride picked out for him and are busy with wedding plans-and he does not know how to say no. They love him, and the trouble is that he loves them too. He vows to his best friend that if only someone would set before him the plainest, dullest, most ordinary female, he would marry her without delay.

He is not really serious, of course, but the very next day a woman who resembles the one he described to an uncanny degree appears in the visitors' salon of his home, claiming a distant kinship and begging for a reference so that she can seek employment. Suddenly Miles becomes very serious indeed and offers her something quite different from what she expects.

The only problem is that Abigail Gardiner is not at all the woman Miles judges her to be during that first encounter. Because she has just been dismissed from her employment for insubordination and is feeling rather desperate, she has come to the earl-a very distant relation indeed-with a deliberately plain, demure mien.

The drastic mistake Miles has made does not bode well for the future!

Now, this book was originally released in 1991, so I may discover that what I love about Mary Balogh books has evolved since her earliest works. But that's part of the fun of reading, isn't it? So, I'm off to the bookstore this week to Buy It Now. If you like Mary Balogh (or are a fan of regency romance), why not join me?