There is a lot to enjoy about The Seduction of His Wife , the second in Tiffany Clare’s debut series. But there is a lot that bothered me, too. In the end, I think the biggest issue with this book is that it has a fairly solid basic structure, but fails to build upon it successfully.

Emma Hallaway married Richard Mansfield, Earl of Asbury, when she was just fifteen and he nineteen. He left the day after their wedding, and the two haven’t seen each other in twelve years – until they run into each other in, of all places, a brothel. He is lying low after returning to London (the madam is a friend). She is meeting a man who is blackmailing her. You see, Emma is only on the surface a respectable countess; her true passion is painting pictures of nude women, and one of her very early portraits of herself has fallen into the hands of a former friend (and current enemy).

Richard is a bit surprised that his wife, whom he remembers as a shy, awkward fifteen-year-old girl, is a beautiful and desirable woman. As he is going to be sticking around England for a while after getting out of his profitable but dangerous opium trading business, he decides to finally become a husband to Emma after more than a decade of abandonment.

I really liked the premise of the novel. While it is clear that Richard was not faithful to his wife during the time they were separated, I did understand why he left and didn’t necessarily think or act like a married man. He was nineteen at the time – still a boy, really. I do wish, though, that the author had elaborated more on the circumstances of their marriage. This book is set in the middle of the nineteenth century – the arranged marriage of a fifteen-year-old girl of Emma’s class was not exactly standard practice. There is, unfortunately, no reason given for this deviation from the norm.

Emma is a great character, one whom I respected for her willingness to make her own life and pursue her passion. She didn’t welcome Richard back with open arms, which I appreciated, while still acknowledging the reality of the situation. But I think too much attention is paid to their physical connection rather than their emotional one. I wanted to see them getting to know each other. There is some of this, but not enough.

In addition to those qualifications, there are a few other problems I had with the book. The element of suspense – Emma’s blackmailer and Richard’s assailant – doesn’t come together neatly, though it tries to. Most irksome, there is a major relationship conflict that isn’t resolved, a vital secret of Emma’s that Richard never learns in the course of the novel. It’s left hanging there, waiting to come between Emma and Richard. (Apologies for vagueness – I’d hate to spoil someone.) The entire book seems a bit disjointed in a way that makes it feel almost like the author forgot what she had already written. For example, Richard decides early on in the book that the way into his wife’s bed is to court her, and he does. Two hundred pages later, Richard contemplates the idea of courting her. These inconsistencies kept pulling me out of the story – as did an irritating writing quirk of the author’s: Sentence fragments. Lots and lots of sentence fragments.

This book needed another few rounds of editing and revising, I think. The potential is there for a fun historical romance, but the pieces just didn’t fall into place.