Jessica Wild returns in A Wild Affair (Ballantine, 2009), author Gemma Townley’s follow up to The Importance of Being Married. This is a romantic comedy ideal for light reading.  The fluffy plot traipses through London as Jessica flirts with disaster in both her personal life and professional career.  A Wild Affair is chick lit at its ideal, full of romance and trouble for the heroine and her prince.

Jessica is planning her wedding to the man of her dreams.  Nothing could be more perfect now that she’s engaged to Max Wainwright.  Max is smart, handsome, and her boss.  He constantly showers Jessica with compliments and words of endearment.  He’s clearly the man of her dreams.  His only downside is he tends to oblivious to the obvious.

In addition to her upcoming nuptials, Jessica’s now a wealthy heiress (for more on this, read The Importance of Being Married first).  Her career as an advertising executive has taken off since she landed the biggest account at her firm and the buzz in the advertising world is she’ll gain award-winning recognition for her achievements with this campaign.

All things in order mean a plot twist is coming and of course the title of the book doesn’t give it away.  Jessica finds reasons to suspect perfect-fiancé Max of infidelity.  The knowledge of her beloved committing the ultimate betrayal can only lead her to getting inebriated and doing something foolish, which she does.

The story bounces between Jess at work and Jess pow-wowing with her group of friends that isn’t at all like the Bridget Jones movies.  Her friends are each unique and make for entertaining drama as each offers Jessica their own style of advice to help her out of the many sticky messes.  Her best mate Helen looks for a way to turn everything into an episode for her reality TV show or finding a potential boyfriend.  Giles is the gay friend slash Jessica’s wedding planner.  The wedding is his priority so anything that conflicts with it he’s against so his pet project isn’t ruined.  Ivana’s intuition always detects when someone has done “the boom-boom” and if they haven’t, she specializes in instructing on how to attract members of the opposite sex.  She alone makes the story.

Jessica is bombarded with advice from her motley gang, both good and bad.  In true form, she follows the bad advice until her situation escalates to the brink of disaster and only if she follows her heart will everything be set to right.  The only problem is she may be too late.  (Insert a famous Don LaFontaine line here.)

Townley writes in the chick lit genre with gusto.  Her story is engaging with its London flare and comical characters.  Each one from Jessica’s assistant, Caroline, to her company’s all-important client, Chester, and of course her gang of friends colors the story from beginning to end.  A Wild Affair stands on its own, but pick up The Importance of Being Married to get the full scoop.