Finished 12-4-11, rating 3.5/5, fiction, 353 pages, pub. 2009

Peggy has been waiting for Brock to propose for 7 years, so is it any surprise that after a drunken night in Vegas with girlfriends that she wakes up next to a stranger?  Oh, and that he’s her husband?  After heading back to New York City and the store she owns with her best friend, she receives a call from Luke, her Connecticut WASP husband.  This White Anglo-Saxon Protestant husband comes from one of the oldest families in New England, a fact that his aunt and friends don’t let him forget.  When his aunt finds out about his marriage she changes her will so that the pair must stay married for a year to inherit.

I liked the New England setting and aunt Abigail.  She was a hoot.  As a ninety-year old woman who was at turns fruity as a loop and sharp as a tack, she was the real heart of the novel, even with her Waspish ideas.  Luke was smart and quiet and sometimes nice.  He wasn’t the most enigmatic hero I’ve encountered, but there was nothing terrible either.  He was a solid guy.

It’s not the high brows I had a problem with it was Peggy.  I found her a distasteful character.  On weekends she’s in Connecticut playing married for money and during the week she’s in New York with a clueless Brock.  She never really won me over, no matter how much I liked her friends.

I liked the story and the humor and the way that Lipton played on the stereotypes of the old, moneyed New England families.  It’s only my dislike for Peggy that kept me from loving this one.

This is from my personal library.