I picked up The Wedding Wish hoping for something light and fun. Instead I got shallow and silly, with plenty of typos thrown in for good measure. After a chapter or two I was not particularly engaged in the story, but my fingers were itching to fix everything with a red pen. Needless to say, it was not the reading experience I was hoping for.

Rachel Cresswell is fun-loving, flirtatious, and popular. The daughter of a notorious thief called “The Devilish Dandy,” Rachel has led a life tinged with scandal, but she is so well-liked that few hostesses shun her. Although her sisters have recently become engaged, she swears that she is too much like her father to ever marry. Instead she toys with men and plots revenge on her mean aunt. Her aunt was her deceased mother’s sister, and is the one who helped drive her mother from her family when she married down. This “forced” her father to turn to thievery so he could support his family. Now Rachel has an opportunity to attend an engagement party in Surrey, which is near to her aunt’s home. She knows her presence will really irritate her aunt, so she decides to go, thinking there will be untold opportunities to embarrass her aunt and get under her skin.

Anthony Clarke may just change all of Rachel’s plans. He comes upon her while she is in the middle of her revenge scheme. He finds her attractive, and even though he is sought after by every woman in the ton, he finds himself captivated by her. He has been invited to the same party, so he decides to go. Not, of course, that he’s interested in Rachel. He is a confirmed bachelor after all.

So they get to Surrey and sparks and hormones fly. Rachel’s dad has insisted on accompanying her, and he has a new identity; he is now Mr. Foxworth, Prinny fashion advisor. Although he went to jail and was almost hanged for his crimes as The Devilish Dandy, people in London and at the house party apparently possess very poor memories, so his secret is safe. He just may get himself into trouble again, however – he seems to have an affinity for the bride-to-be. Meanwhile, Anthony and Rachel discover that Rachel’s aunt has hidden her disabled, wheelchair-bound daughter in a cottage in the forest, and they try to make her life better.

There’s more to the story: Anthony has a stutter. This made his life horrible as a child, and his father hates him. It appears to have little effect on his current life, since he’s a Regency sex god, and he only seems to remember to stutter one word about every other time he talks. This is not enough to make him believable, but it is enough to occasionally call to mind K-k-k-ken from A Fish Called Wanda.

The best word to describe this book is lite. Characterization lite, plot lite, conflict lite. If a Carla Kelly book is a turkey dinner, The Wedding Wish is a bowl of popcorn. The whole thing has a made-up feel, not unlike a purple prose parody entry. It’s impossible to lose yourself in the story, or even for one second believe that these people are real. The trappings are all taken from the Big Book O’ Regency Clichés. We have a devastatingly handsome couple who can practically stop traffic because they are so gorgeous. We have a confirmed bachelor who eschews current fashions and dresses all in black. Neither of them wants to marry, even though they are madly in love with each other. And let’s not forget the completely evil aunt who single-handedly drives a man into a life of crime and hides her own daughter in the woods.

Troubling typos aside, there were other problems with the writing itself. The prose is very over-blown and dramatic, which compounds the “purple prose parody” feeling. There’s a lot of the obvious and unconvincing sexual tension; Anthony thinks a lot about throwing Rachel to the ground and having his wicked way with her, and Rachel’s insides are often melting with lust. The whole book just lacks any kind of depth or subtlety. When everything is just right out there for the reader to see, there are no fun discoveries to be made or characters to explore.

This book is third in a series, but I didn’t feel like I really missed anything – except perhaps an explanation for why The Devilish Dandy had to steal instead of earning an honest living like everybody else. Since this book left me with no desire to read the other two, the motivation of The Devilish Dandy will just have to remain an unsolved mystery.