| Title: | All About Seduction | |
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| Author: | Katy Madison | |
| Publication Date: | November 1, 2011 | |
| Publisher's Description | Caroline Broadhurst is about to take a lover -- at her husband's command. For fifteen years, Caroline has done everything her much older husband has desired -- except provide an heir. Now he has given her an ultimatum: seduce a suitable gentleman and bear a son. Caroline would never think of bowing to such a shameful order, but then she meets Jack Applegate. Jack has longed for the beautiful, untouchable Caroline for years, but the chasm between them was too wide to ever dream of crossing. Now, fate and passion have thrown them together, but the potential scandal threatens to smother their love. And when a violent secret comes to light, only a terrible sacrifice will prevent the flame of their affection from being snuffed out forever. . . |
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| My rating: | **.5 | |
The premise of this book was pretty interesting to me. It is set in a time where birthright was everything and obtaining heirs was one of the primary motivations for marriage. It’s almost unimaginable that any wealthy man in this society would intentionally scheme to have his wife become pregnant by another man (although I’ve since read another book that takes place in this time period and has much the same motivation behind the meeting of the protagonists – review forthcoming). As in many romance novels that begin with a married heroine or hero (although it’s usually the heroine), Caroline’s first husband was not good to her. He didn’t treat her well, and belittled all that she’d done to help him in his business.
Enter Jack, the factory worker/engineer who’d noticed Caroline from afar and had been content limit their contact to longing looks, until fate (and an accident) threw them together. Jack was almost too good to be true. His home life had reached Dickensian levels of awfulness, but he persevered out of love for his hundreds of siblings. Good old Jack. At the novel’s opening, Jack had decided that he’d sacrificed enough for his family and was ready to start doing things in service of his own ambition when TRAGEDY! STRUCK! I have so say that Jack and Caroline’s unrelenting goodness began to grate on me early in the book, and that their affair was so innocuous when compared to all the evils perpetrated in this book that it barely made a blip on my Sinometer.
This book was interesting enough when I read it, but even a couple of weeks later, I’m having trouble grasping at details that should be obvious. There’s just not a lot to hold on to when it comes to this book. You know that Caroline’s husband is going to die, just not how, and that Jack will persevere, just now how. Honestly, the journey wasn’t captivating enough for the details to remain with me.
If you’re looking for a quick historical that will pluck your class-warfare-loving heartstrings, this will do until you find something better, but I wouldn’t expect too much from this book.
