Candace Camp 'The Marriage Wager'

Clever premise. Francesca Haughston, 'a reigning beauty of the ton' wagers the Duke of Rochford that she can help any young woman at Lady Welcombe's ball get a marriage proposal by the end of the season. He picks Constance, a spinster of 28 who is chaperoning her two younger cousins in their first season. Constance was nursing her sick father and so never had her own season on the marriage mart.

I liked that Constance runs into the hero before Francesca 'transforms' her and that they like each other right away. Dominic needs to marry money to keep his family afloat, therein lies the rub, as Constance isn't just on the shelf, she's poor too.

This book is well written, has enjoyable characters, has some sex and sexual tension to keep you going until things heat up. But in the end, you need something more than this to fill out 379 pages. It could have been shorter, or it could have been funny, or it could have had a more interesting plot. But it needed something.

This book had a lot of things going for it and was easy to read. I just can't give it a full five stars.

Historical Romance 2007: 4 out of 5 stars