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15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Deliciously Seductive!, April 14, 2008
This review is from: The Seduction of an Unknown Lady (Mass Market Paperback)
After the first book in the MacBride Family Trilogy, "The Secret Passion of Simon Blackwell," the MacBride family is back in England after the tumultuous ending in India, with two wounded and brooding brothers Alec, the Duke of Glendon and his brother Aidan, but also a happy ending with Annabel MacBride and Simon Blackwell's marriage.
"The Seduction of An Unknown Lady" highlights Aidan, who is continuing to struggle with his physical and emotional injuries that took place in that final battle. Home in England as a hero, he feels anything but a hero, and spends many a long night brooding, until one night on a dark street he meets and rescues an Unknown Lady. Immediately something draws the handsome Aidan to the lonely and beautiful, Fionna Hawkes. Aidan has his physical and emotional struggles to deal with after the family's return, being partially blind in one eye, but also feeling deep guilt over the loss of numerous comrades in a battle in which he blames himself for. Fionna is a local bookseller and writer who secretly uses the pen name, F. J. Sparrow so she can assist her ill mother and provide the best of care for her.
Friendship soon develops into passion and a growing love as Aidan spends more and more time with Fionna. Fionna is frightened by Aidan's seduction and the intense passion she feels for him, while at the same time she understands the inner struggles he deals with and feels the need to help him, but at the same time does not trust enough to share her own burdens of her mother's illness and secret writing with Aidan. When Aidan discovers Fionna needs his protection from an unknown follower, he realizes that the beauty he has been seducing and is falling in love with has many unknown secrets. Aidan feels he must do whatever he can to help this beauty and what haunts her deep inside. Mysteries are revealed as love and passion bloom and soon Aidan learns that by revealing the unknown Fionna and the demons that haunt her dark world, she has helped him overcome his demons. Eventually their friendship and love deepens into more than a simple seduction of an unknown lady.
Every book Samantha James writes is a delight. Her writing style is captivating with characters that have depth and struggles to overcome. Her sensual scenes between the love interests are well-written while at the same time discovering true love and happiness are what really matter. It will be interesting to read Alec's story next, as the MacBride Family is one that is endearing and one which the reader can become absorbed in and enjoy. Ms. James has written another sensual romance with mystery and suspense that are again, like this story, difficult to put down.
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Dull., May 21, 2008
This review is from: The Seduction of an Unknown Lady (Mass Market Paperback)
This book was dull and boring. Both h/h lacked personalities. Fionna may have been TSTL, but mostly she was a shrew. She was not a likable heroine. Aidan was a saint to stick with her. Over and over she told him to leave and she didn't want him, yada, yada, yada and I kept wishing he would just to put me out of my misery. But, no, he kept coming back for more of her tirades. Actually I couldn't imagine how they could stay together - they fought so much, yelled at each other, etc.
AND, I am getting very tired of the same old 'hero lusting over the heroine after just meeting her and he is hard every time she comes near'. While she 'gets hot and wet and achy any time he is near'. This all without them having a relationship. Sorry, that isn't romantic. Sex in the proper context adds to a romance. Sex instead of developing the story doesn't. Too many I have read lately are neglecting the story and romance for the sake of the sex scenes and all the lust! If I only read regencies like this (and the last several I have read have been) I would begin to assume men and women back then only thought about bedding each other and men only thought about how and how soon they could get a woman to sleep with them.
I have read several Samantha James books and liked them. This wasn't one of them. I read Simon Blackwell and seem to remember thinking it was ok, but can't remember anything about it, so it must not have been too memorable.
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15 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Not a true historical, May 11, 2008
This review is from: The Seduction of an Unknown Lady (Mass Market Paperback)
The year is 1854, the height of the Victorian age. The heroine owns a book shop, lives in the apartments upstairs and is a bookish virgin. Yet she blithely goes out for midnight walks alone, has a cleaning lady in once or twice a week and goes out on dates with the hero. Is this a 21st century woman playing dress-up in Victorian garb?
As a lover of historical romances, I find myself fed up with today's publishing houses. Editors seem to have forgotten what a historical setting entails.
Shame on Samantha James for falling into that Bridget Jones' Diary trap. Women in 1850's England had real issues to confront. Not being able to own property, fear of pregnancy, knowing that your livelihood was based entirely on how your peers viewed your virtue. Not to mention the idea that any woman could manage a Victorian bookshop (as well as her warddrobe) with just a cleaning lady in once or twice a week is ridiculous. There was no electricity, no running water, no refrigerators to store food. Keeping a household clean, food on the table and clothing as well as your own personal hygiene acceptable was a full time job in itself.
As for the romance itself, it promised something never delivered. The most perilous bits came from the snippets of F.J. Sparrow's writing. The rest is a long diatribe if will she/won't she let him in the door. it had no emotional resonance. A pity since historical novels often have peril just by nature of the time they are set. In the 1850's London was an overcrowded city on the brink of epidemic disease and death. A woman alone had to be very clever just to survive.
Save yourself the aggravation of this current crop of historicals and go read some of the classic ones from a decade ago.
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