Practically Wicked is the final book in the Haverston Family trilogy and is nice in that we do spend a little more time with the Haverston family in this one – it was odd that they were relegated to secondary characters in the previous book. This is another romance that doesn’t have much in the way of wild plot shenanigans – just a nice, comforting read which was perfect for a sick day when all I wanted to do was curl up with a cup of tea, a blanket, and a cat in my lap – and a book, of course.
Miss Anna Rees is the illegitimate daughter of a demimondaine. Her mother limits her exposure to the visitors to her home and the only person Anna knows very well is her governess, Mrs. Culpepper. Lord Maximillian Dane is “the Disappointment of McMullin Hall”, newly elevated to viscount on the death of his brother. He meets Anna one night when he drunkenly loses his way in her mother’s house and trips and falls at her feet. They spend some time talking, he offers to marry her on the spot, as one does, but she refuses. She does, however, extract from him a promise to call upon her the following week but the story picks up four years later with the two of them each hurt by the fact that that did not happen.
Anna is stubborn, pedantic, and argumentative ( although I don’t mean to imply those traits should be viewed as negative – I quite liked her). She is well educated within the very narrow confines afforded her in her mother’s house, and she is desperate to learn more about the world and about herself. Max is presented as a rake albeit with strict principles. He has a fondness for playing knight errant and making romantic gestures. As with Nearly a Lady, this book featured very likeable people that I enjoyed spending time with and who I wanted to see get things worked out and get to their happily ever after. My biggest complaint with the book was that it barreled into its conclusion – when I noticed how close to the end I was, I honestly thought I must have gotten a defective download and that there was no way for the story to resolve in so little time. It did resolve, and in a fairly agreeable manner, but I would have preferred for it to have been fleshed out a bit instead of “Bam – there’s your answer, the end.”