So Candace Camp gets some credit for sparing us the Regency spies, but The Marriage Wager is, nevertheless, is a book I’ve read before – many, many, many times, as a matter of fact.

You probably won’t be surprised considering the book’s title that the oh-so-familiar (and well-worn) plot device of a bet is at the centerpiece of the story. This time out an experienced, lovely, but financially struggling widow bets a duke that she can get an acceptable offer of marriage for any young girl of the duke’s choosing. The duke picks young Constance Woodley. (And, five will get you ten that the duke and the widow are going to be the big wrap up to this new trilogy.)

Constance is that oh-so-familiar young woman forced to live with an odious relative – in this case, an aunt – who constantly belittles her and who has firmly placed Constance on the shelf in favor of her own two daughters, taking her along on a London season purely to act as chaperone to them. But at a party (and this book is just brimming with balls and parties), the duke spies Constance and Constance meets the widow’s cute brother.

Do you really need any more detail? Cute brother is nice. Constance is nice. Evil Aunt is mean. The vicious and nasty society belle who’s out to take down cute brother is really vicious and nasty and totally over the top. And, to top it all, off the duke’s appearance is actually described as “saturnine,” a word historical romance authors pull out only to describe their bad boy lordly heroes. And then, of course, there’s that Future Hero neon sign flashing steadily on his forehead. The sad truth here is that if you can’t see where this one is going…well, then you just haven’t been reading historical romance for more than about two months.

To be fair, there’s nothing really wrong with this book. It’s just not original. Not even remotely. In fact, I kept thinking as I read that it reminded me of the old traditional Regencies I used to gobble up years ago – and I’m not talking about the really good ones, either – with the addition of a few warm sex scenes.

So, even with points included for the absence of Regency spies, I can’t recommend The Marriage Wager. The best we can hope for this one is that it will soon be quietly forgotten and that the author turns off the auto pilot when writing the series’ second entry.