This Perfect Kiss is a really fun book. It’s very contemporary, with characters that actually seem to live on the same planet we do – at least most of the time. It’s also funny in a very outlandish way. Occasionally it really goes over the top, but most of the time I was having way too much fun to notice.

Rory Kincaid is rich as Midas. He’s inherited a boatload of money from his rich, show-business relatives, and he’s sold the software company that he developed. But he still feels like he needs to live down his past, especially the scandalous lives of his father and grandfather, who have had eleven wives between them. Prominent politicians from the Blue Party, a new party that wants to bring integrity and honesty back to Washington, have approached Rory about running for the Senate from California, and Rory decides that this will be the perfect way to restore honor to the Kincaid name.

Before he can get his candidacy going, he wants to sell his ancestral home, and that means getting rid of the huge collection of vintage clothing and costumes. When he first sees Jilly Skye, he is sure she is the worst possible person for the job. She is tiny and sexy, with breasts that threaten to spill out of her totally inappropriate gown. But Jilly, who owns a vintage clothing store called Things Past, ends up landing the job. And it’s really more than a job to her; her best friend and business partner, Kim, is actually one of Rory’s grandfather’s ex-wives, and the mother of Rory’s aunt Iris. Kim signed a prenuptual agreement when she was too young to know better, and it denied her all visitation rights for her daughter. Jilly wants to catalogue and sort the valuable old clothes, but she really wants to get to know Rory (who has guardianship of Iris) and convince him to let Kim be a part of her daughter’s life.

Rory and Jilly are immediately attracted to each other. Rory thinks Jilly’s vintage outfits are wacky, but he also thinks she’s about the sexiest woman alive. Jilly thinks Rory looks like the desert sheikh of her fantasies. When they are caught on film in a compromising postion, Rory convinces Jilly to agree to a faux engagement, just for awhile, so he can lock up the Blue Party nomination.

You might think these two would wind up in bed quickly after that, but the course of their romance is a little rocky. Rory may be almost irresistable, but he is also domineering and at times even insulting to Jilly’s lifestyle and her friends. Rory and the reader both come to realize that Jilly’s outward appearance belies her innocence (in fact, she may even be a little too innocent for some readers). But this is romance, so of course these two will fall deeply in love and come to an understanding about each other.

This Perfect Kiss is a very humorous book, and I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. The characters find themselves in some ridiculous situations, and Ridgway has quite a gift for describing them. There are some great scenes involving a chinchilla (hey, even the word chinchilla is funny) and my personal favorite – a mishap in a condom shop.

A lot of the humor comes from the characters themselves. Jilly is especially endearing, and on behalf of freckled women everywhere, I’d like to personally thank Ms. Ridgway for making her a sexy, freckled woman. Rory’s aunt Iris (who is four) also provides some fun moments, and she really seems four most of the time too. There is a touching secondary romance involving Kim, and while neither she nor her love interest is on stage long it was really a nice addition to the plot.

Rory was a little more problematic for me, because at times he really is too judgmental, and he blames Jilly for all kinds of stuff that is really his fault. He often gets annoyed with her for her outlandish clothes, conveniently forgetting that she is doing him a giant favor by pretending to be engaged to him in the first place. This is the kind of stuff that might drive me crazy in another book, but in this case it’s just so darn funny that I found myself able to forgive Rory for his domineering behavior. The main reason Rory is critical is because he is pursuing the Blue Party nomination, but I got the sense that he was being critical because he thought he should be, rather than because he was truly a narrow-minded jerk.

Readers may have to suspend disbelief a time or two (the very existence and prominence of the Blue Party seemed a bit out there for me) but since the outlandishness is part of the fun, I think the book is really worth it. Lovers of humorous contemporaries won’t want to miss it.