Customer Reviews

Then Comes Seduction (Thorndike Basic)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(11)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is the second book in Ms. Balogh's Huxtable series. The first book, First Comes Marriage, introduced us to the Huxtable family and was the middle sister, Vanessa's story. In that book we watched the family adapt to an unexpected inheritance, the acquisition of a title and life among the ton. This book continues the Huxtable's story and features the beautiful youngest sister, Katherine.

Katherine has never lacked for suitors, but yearns for more than compatibility in her marriage. She is determined to hold out for love and passion. She meets Jasper Finley, Baron Montford, and is immediately intrigued. She knows him to have a reputation as a rake and has been advised to keep her distance. However, one night she throws caution to the wind and walks alone with him on one of the sheltered paths of Vauxhall Gardens. An intimate encounter ensues and Katherine retains only her physical innocence when Jasper pulls away and announces that his interest in her is only as the subject of a scandalous wager.

Three years pass before Jasper and Katherine are thrown together again. Events occur which bring the occurrence of the wager to the attention of the ton. Now Katherine must either accept Jasper's offer of marriage or bring shame to her family and displacement to his.

As always, Ms. Balogh tells a moving tale. This is one of her quieter works and the pace is slower than many will like. It probably is a truer representation of how we find love, not in a lightening bolt but rather in a storm. The characters are multifaceted and Jasper's story and his character are revealed slowly through the pages of the book. Through his story we are bidden to consider some of the deeper issues in life: Can you truly love another if you do not love yourself? Does being alone mean being physically separate from others, or something more? Are dreams foolish fancies or are they vital to life? All ponderous issues which add weight to this story, but at times also seem to weigh it down. The book is longer than is typical, at almost 420 pages. Editing it down to the more typical 350 pages would have tightened the story up and made it a bit more palatable to some.

I would definitely recommend reading this book but advise patience, it is a quiet tale.

At first I wasn't sure I would like this book, just from reading the preview (even though I liked First Comes Marriage very much), but I guess you can't judge a book by one chapter, since once I got through the premise, I enjoyed this book very much. The male (Jasper) at first seemed quite unlikeable, but by the end, he was much more hero-like (actually had some principles). The heroine (Katherine) wasn't exactly my favorite right away (not terribly fond of overly beautiful, seemingly silly types), but she ends up looking more intelligent as the story enfolds. The Huxtables are turning out to be a very interesting family & I am looking forward to Margaret's book!(Am glad that the discerning majority of Mary B's readers are liking this series and are realizing the joys of normal, quieter romances.)

Perhaps I have read a different book than some reviewers here, but I have to say the book I read, Then Comes Seduction, was a wonderful book. I absolutely loved it. I will say right up front that I am not a Mary Balogh fan as I have not read many of her books and the ones I did were usually so angsty that I could hardly finish them. Then Comes Seduction started slowly as we were introduced to Jasper( he was introduced to me--maybe he was in earlier books, IDK) and the setup of his meeting with Katherine. After that, this book just took off. I have just finished reading Deanna Raybourn's Julia Grey series and Then Comes Seduction was a perfect book to read after those. It had a lovely story and was not crammed with sex scene after sex scene. I loved the descriptions in this book. I could just picture the scenes and could see in my mind the scene with Katherine and Jasper in the glass gazebo that preceded all their trouble.

The story was spellbinding, I loved the characters. Katherine's family were especially likable to the extent that I am going to read the other books in this series. I want to read Vanessa and Elliott's story and am anxious for Margaret and Stephen's. Lucky for me that they are available soon. The excerpt at the back of the book really whetted my appetite for Margaret and Duncan.

That brings me to Jasper. What a guy!! There were so many layers to him. At the beginning, I thought he was just a typical jerk rake. But as the layers were peeled back, I couldn't believe how much I liked him. He was a young man who had been terribly scarred emotionally by his stepfather. But, with Katherine's love, he was reborn. Watching them realize they loved each other was fantastic.

People gush over Mary Balogh's writing and her stories. I have to say they are right. At least with this series. I am going to check out her backlist. Maybe I will chance upon books I will like as much as I liked this one.

I found this book to be entertaining and enjoyable. The entire series was great. I found the hero & heroine to be well developed - I especially liked their sense of humor.

This is not a good place to start if you've never read Mary Balogh. Her earlier works are so much better than this drivel and far-fetched plot. Not worth the time or money. Seriously seems like someone kidnapped Balogh, hid her away, and then wrote this and put her name on it.

I'm not sure about this one. As usual with Mary Balogh it was a well written tale but this time it didn't read as smoothly as usual for me and I'll try and analyze why....

I don't particularly mind that it was not action packed nor was it full of anguish and big misunderstandings. It was a gentle romance and I always love a story about a marriage of convenience that turns into a love match.

What I didn't like: The seduction scene in Vauxhall gardens at the beginning went far too far to be realistic. I found Katherine's constant preaching to the hero about love and the meaning of love irritating. In parts the book was far too wordy and I found myself skimming pages - it could have been edited down without losing too much of the main story and perhaps it would have benefitted and flowed better - it was all a bit laborious. "Dash it" and "By Jove" thought by the hero when he surprises himself by getting all sentimental about her - OK he's denying to himself that he could possibly have finer feelings but the point was stressed too much in my view and those phrases grated. There were too many Mary Balogh clichés - the naked swimming in the lake; the country fete for the locals at the hero's country house (the Plumed Bonnet and others - if it's not a summer fete then it's a Christmas party followed by a ball). In fact there were far too many very obvious similarities and qualities reminiscent of characters and plots from her other books. There was also too much re-capping of the background family story in case anyone hadn't read the previous book which I also found annoying and repetitive and clumsily done.

The love story was sweet but it didn't drag me along with it. There were too many annoyances for me to get very deeply involved. The overall feeling I had was that the writing was too contrived and too self-conscious. I'll still read all the rest of the books in this series but I do hope they get better.

The wager? To seduce AND RUIN the innocent and respected Katherine within two weeks. The book never ever recovers from this disgusting beginning in my opinion. Not to mention the fact that if he HAD succeeded Katherine's family would have had to call him out so that he would either die in a dual or be banished forever. Or marry Katherine right then and there. None of that is ever mentioned. Jasper just trips along planning to ruin her, cost is never mentioned. There is this extremely cold blooded seduction in Vauxhaul Gardens where you keep waiting for Katherine to STOP him and when she doesn't what can you think but SL*T? The woman just met him little more than an hour before! I was furious when Katherine did nothing to stop him as well as disgusted at him for agreeing to such a despicable wager.

This whole scenario made the following chapters of the book heavy going even though three years passes. I still found it hard to believe that Katherine would ever under any circumstances speak to him again. But even before the villains enter and force a marriage Jasper is making headway with Katherine. Does she have ANY self-respect? Jasper's care and concern for his sister help to redeem him a little but not enough to overcome that hideous scene in the Gardens.

Ms. Balogh does work very hard to overcome this dreadful beginning and I will say that when the crises moment comes it is touching. But it still wasn't enough for me to believe these two characters could have made a go of it. There just never was a believable spark between them and I don't know a woman alive who could have forgiven the contempt he spewed on her during that aborted seduction. Even the author calls it "The most obscene, disgusting wager ever written into a betting book."

It was. And no matter how many times Jasper said "I love you" I didn't believe him. It did not help that they decided to make another wager after the wedding and stop having sex for a month. Why? That wasn't very clear and left the book very rushed at the end while they are supposed to be connecting and falling in love, but not touching. The point was lost on me. Even worse than not finding much chemistry between our main characters was that much of the last of the book was just slow and boring. The most interesting character was Uncle Seth. We couldn't even have an interesting scene where Prunella and Clarence get thrown off the property as they should have been. When Charlotte says she's glad they came because family is important I nearly puked. That was carrying forgiveness way too far. After what they had done to Katherine's reputation out of pure maliciousness? No satisfaction there either. I at least wanted to hear Jasper tell Clarence he would not be allowed to marry Charlotte under any circumstances. Since that was the motive behind all their nasty deeds that should have been addressed. But everything is forgiven in a Balogh book. No behavior too contemptible that it cannot just be ignored.

I also don't like Ms. Balogh's new quirk of having her last two heroes have "lazy eyes." Both Jasper and Elliot's eyelids are always drooping at half mast when they look at the heroine. How is this attractive? It makes me think of someone who has had a stroke. Eyelids at half mast are unattractive under any circumstances. And several times she says their eyelids are at half mast while their right eyebrow is lifted. I don't even think this is anatomically possible. This new affectation is just annoying. I'm sorry to have little good to say about the new series. Will book three be strike three?

I really tried to finish this book. I actually got more than halfway through and the book just became more tedious and boring. I agree with some of the reviews that the wager the hero made at the beginning was disgusting (especially since he was a friend of the heroine's cousin) and the actions of the heroine was...umm kind of loose. Since he was really drunk when the wager was made it did not seem so bad until soberly he set out to win the bet.

But I was still okay with it because I was intrigued to how both characters were going to redeem themselves. I was looking forward to seeing how these two who had such a bad start would have a happy ending. Unfortunately, the wager and almost seduction part of the book was the most interesting part. Kate and Jasper got duller and duller the more I read and I just had to skim the last third of the book (I'm not into self torture).

I guess the major flaw in this book was that the author never flushes out the main characters. She never provides a good enough reason for Jasper's actions, he has a younger sister he loves and for that reason alone he would not make such a bet. Kate I understand she is young, naïve, looking for excitement but to let someone go that far with her within hours of meeting was not believable.

Finally, all the talk of drooping eyelids, wagers, and what is love just annoyed me and weighted the book down. Hopefully, the eldest sister's book is better (had ordered it before reading this book). Fingers crossed.

I've read Slightly Scandalous and Slightly Wicked, both really wonderful books with engaging characters, its hard to believe this book was written by the same author. It's disappointing really.

The story line is very contrived and convenient. I'm not looking for anything too surprising in a regency having read too many of them over the years. I'm just looking for some enjoyable light reading and a happy ending. :)

But this story is farfetched to a fault.

But more importantly the 'witty' dialogue and banter isn't remotely interesting. :( I'm not the type of reader that sticks with tried and true writers, I randomly pick up regencies at the bookstore whenever the mood strikes me, so I've read many beginner authors, some good, some not so good. But, frankly, this one is... bad. :( It's the first time I've ever skimmed through whole sections of a regency. The details and conversation aren't interesting so the characters end up uninteresting, there is a lot of detail given about family members and 'the villians' but it never really goes anywhere.

*Potential Spoilers below*

The wagers are just completely silly and they are contrived as some big plot point to move the story along, but then never addressed very well and suddenly dismissed by too quickly.

And the hero, who is supposedly a rake, isn't much of a rake really... only in the very very beginning, even then he has a crisis of conscious, after that his behavior is always exemplary.

Also, at the house party, he comments that he feels like an old gentleman with all the young people around. It seems too much of a quick jump, a rake and supposedly seducer of innocents is now feeling elderly? I can understand him maturing maybe but its a stretch to think he wouldn't at least enjoy their boisterous company. The characters' personalities just don't seem well developed.

Finally, the one factor in the beginning of the story that forces the hero to marry, isn't ever resolved! Imagine my surprise when I turn the page and find the story over. You assume it ends positively, but its never discussed between the groups involved and the villains are still hanging out, there are never sent packing.

Anyway, I still have a few Mary Balogh novels to read and I hope to enjoy them like I did the others. But skip this one if you can, really not good.

I liked it! It wasn't as bad as some of the reviewers have said. I'm looking forward to the next installment.