Seduce Me : All About Romance

Seduce Me

Grade : C-

There’s a fine distinction between ennui and boredom. Ennui is having fun talking about how bored you are while true boredom is one of the most frustrating things on the planet. That was my experience with Ms. Hart’s latest book.

Fielding Grey, treasure hunter, has been hired by Solomon’s, a club devoted to scholars of buried treasure, to steal Pandora’s box from Raven, who has kidnapped Esme Worthington because she has the box’s key. Esme happens to be one of the foremost scholars on Pandora’s Box, but it’s a ruddy good thing she wasn’t kidnapped for her brains because the first thing she does when she is alone with the box is open it – buuuuuut anyway, the box has a bunch of bracelets each representing a sin and Magpie Esme puts on the one that says Lust. Problem is, Esme can’t take off the bracelet, and she discovers that if she doesn’t ditch it before the next lunar eclipse she’ll die. Then there are some revelations at the end and a hand is chopped off and e-e-e-e-e-v-i-l Raven escapes to presumably wreak more havoc in subsequent books and Esme and Fielding live happily-ever-after. The end.

Although I find the plot contrived and pulp-worthy, I don’t supposed it’s any worse than others in our beleaguered genre. But the execution is so relentlessly average I can’t feel anything except frustration that I’ve read it. Hackneyed characters. Forgettable prose. Overly manufactured plots. Been there, done that.

Is there anything redeeming? Well yes, I suppose. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being inoffensive. And there’s nothing wrong with grammatical, syntactical, and punctuational proficiency. But where is the life? Where is the style? And most of all, where’s my interest? Mired in a miasma of mediocrity, I presume.

All this would normally add up to a straight C, but the last forty pages garnered a minus when they went haywire. This at least had the effect of jolting me out of my literature-induced stupor. And that was the highlight of the book. (The jolting, not the haywire.)

When boredom is self-induced, you only have yourself to blame. But when there’s nothing you can do about it; when you give a book your full attention and get absolutely nothing back; when you know someone has spent months creating a product that, to you, is ineffably and uncompromisingly average – that is frustration.

Reviewed by Enya Young

Grade : C-

Book type : European Historical Romance | Historical Romance

Sensuality : Warm

Review Date : July 21, 2009

Published On : 2009/08

Enya Young

I'm a teacher who's been fortunate to live in a few places; currently I'm in England. And if you give me a choice between savoury and sweet, I'll go for savoury every time.

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