REVIEW: The Secret to Seduction by Julie Anne Long
Dear Ms. Long,
For me, reading The Secret to Seduction, was like having a glass of champagne. First the effervescent joy of being introduced to your characters through the liquid clarity of your voice, then the warmth of being immersed in the sensations and emotions that those characters grow to feel, and finally the blissful buzz of the happy ending.
I put off reading this book a while because, though I’d very much enjoyed Beauty and the Spy and liked Ways to be Wicked, I’d heard from a couple of disappointed readers, and even Jayne, though she enjoyed the book and recommended it, was a bit less enthusiastic than I’d hoped.
Silly me. I should know by now that opinions can vary widely, and that, though I have a lot of respect for Jayne’s, it rarely lines up perfectly with mine. I’m so glad I finally picked up the The Secret to Seduction, because for me, it was a delight from start to finish.
Sabrina Fairleigh, the adopted daughter of a vicar, is in love with her father’s curate, Geoffrey Gillray. So when her friend Mary suggests that Sabrina accompany her to a house party at the home of Geoffrey’s cousin Rhys, the earl of Rawden, which Geoffrey will also be attending, Sabrina jumps at the chance. Sabrina wants to become a missionary, and she knows that Geoffrey will be asking his cousin for money with which to finance a mission. She hopes that when the earl of Rawden grants Geoffrey’s request, Geoffrey will ask for her hand in marriage.
Meanwhile, Rhys Gillray, the earl of Rawden and famous poet known as The Libertine, is suffering from boredom and ennui. He is experiencing writer’s block and even the temperamental tiffs of his mistress, the opera singer Sophia Licari, have become less exciting than they used to be. At the bottom of Rhys’ lifestyle is the need to escape guilt for his past misdeeds. Neither Rhys nor Sabrina is aware that that same past connects them, and that Rhys wronged Sabrina before he ever met her.
Therefore, when Sabrina expresses sympathy for those people who are so unfortunate as to be at the mercy of animal passions, Rhys is just bored enough to decide to prove to her that she is just as capable of passion as he or any of his other houseguests.
But what begins as a casual game to Rhys turns into a dangerous whirlpool as he and Sabrina are swept up in their burgeoning attraction to one another, and eventually, they are caught in a compromising position and forced to marry where neither of them wants to. While Rhys and Sabrina reluctantly begin to fall in love, Sabrina’s biological sisters from whom she was separated as a child, Susannah and Sylvie, come closer to finding Sabrina, and the secret from Rhys’ past threatens to tear the newlyweds apart.
The setting (Regency) and setup (rake and virgin) of The Secret to Seduction are as familiar as they get. And if I’ve read one book in which the hero sets out to awaken the heroine to prove a point or in which a couple is caught in an embrace and forced to marry, I don’t know how many I’ve read.
There were a few missteps in the book, too. Sabrina’s adoptive brothers and Rhys’ surviving sister (his mother and other sister died when he was young) are mentioned so briefly that I wondered what the point was in mentioning them at all. Susannah, Sylvie and their husbands get very close to finding Sabrina at one point, and then it takes them a lot longer to resume their search than it seems to me it should. At age thirty, Rhys is a war hero, a successful, sought after poet, a man who restored his family’s fabulous fortune, an earl, and gorgeous too — it seems a bit much even for a romance hero. Also, he is not shown attempting to write much or hobnobbing with other poets, so that aspect of his character feels weak.
And although I’m far from an expert on the Regency, I have my doubts as to the historical accuracy of some details — for example, would a marriage between an earl and a woman of unknown birth really have been accepted by society? And once married, would it be acceptable for Sabrina, now a countess, and for Susannah, a viscountess, to associate with their brother-in-law, Tom Shaughnessy, who was born in the gutter and once owned a bawdy theater?
Given all this, how and why do I still love The Secret to Seduction? Let me count the ways:
I. The Voice
Much has been said lately about the value of a strong writing voice. For me, few books illustrate this as well as yours do. You have a voice to turn a choir of angels envious. When I read your books, I can almost feel it twining around me like a vine that then puts forth beautiful blossoms. To illustrate, here is a paragraph of description from page five:
But only little patches of snow remained, scattered across the green like lacy handkerchiefs. The wan early sunlight was gaining in strength, and the bare birch trees crowding the sides of the road shone nearly metallic in it, making Sabrina blink as they flew past the carriage. She wondered, idly, why trees didn’t become woolly in winter, like cats and cattle, but instead dropped all of their leaves and went bare.
In just three sentences, there’s so much to dazzle me. The metaphor of the snow scattered like lacy handkerchiefs. The imagery in the adjectives and verbs. Instead of trees just being on the road side, they are crowding it. They don’t just shine; they shine “nearly metallic.” And rather than describing the carriage as going past the trees, it is the other way around, the trees that “flew” (another great verb) past the carriage. There is also a lovely rhythm and cadence to the words, and some nifty sound effects, like the alliteration of “woolly in winter” and “cats and cattle.” Finally there is the wonderful contrasting of the trees to the animals, which grow fur in winter rather than shed.
Except for the rare jarring metaphor, yours is the kind of writing style that can cast a spell over me and carry me away from the stress of my daily life as few things can.
But this paragraph isn’t just great description, it’s also great characterization, because it reveals so much about Sabrina. Her youthful sense of wonder, her being awake to the world around her (wonderfully reinforced with her blinking), and her whimsy and sense of humor all come through in just three sentences. And that brings me to the next thing I loved about your book.
II. The Characters
Let me start with in an unlikely place — with the villain and side characters. It is very unusual to come across genre fiction that gives such careful attention to them as you do. Oftentimes, in many of the books I read, the villain or the other woman or the hero’s friend can seem more like afterthoughts, devices to create conflict or move the plot in a certain direction, than like living breathing people. That isn’t the case in The Secret to Seduction. Here, even minor characters can reveal hidden dimensions, something that charms me more than I can say.
As I’ve indicated before, Sabrina and Rhys fall into types, the young, virginal heroine and the jaded rake. What makes me interested in them, however, is the way that you give individual flaws and vulnerabilities that makes these characters feel fresh to me. I’ve already enumerated Sabrina’s humor, whimsy and alertness. Let me add that she is also more sensual, proud and temperamental than she wants to admit at first, and more clever and insightful than Rhys wants to own up to.
In some ways, The Secret to Seduction reads almost like a coming of age story, one about Sabrina’s awakening — to passion, to life, to the vulnerability that love can bring as well as to the happiness that it makes possible.
Rhys too, is very proud, and for him a lot of that pride is bound up in the fact that his venerable family lost almost everything when Rhys was very young. The family name and image are of utmost importance to Rhys because he lost his parents and one sister when he was quite young. Unlike Sabrina, Rhys knows the pain of loss and therefore fears to fall in love, especially when he realizes how his past connects him to Sabrina. He carries a heavy weight of guilt that he seeks to escape, and I, like Jayne, was glad that his past transgression wasn’t a minor one.
Additionally, I loved that like Sabrina, he too was clever and insightful. Both Rhys and Sabrina see deeper into the other than the other wants them to. And so, they uncover each other in layers, not just physically, as Rhys awakens Sabrina’s senses and comes to feel more alive than he has in years, but also emotionally and psychologically. Which brings me to the next thing I loved.
III. The Chemistry
There is a certain magical alchemy that can exist in fiction just as it can in real life, and just as it is difficult to explain the whys and wherefores of its presence in our world, it can be tough for me to put my finger on why, it is exactly, that I do or don’t feel sparks between a pair of lovers in a book.
Maybe it is the way that Rhys and Sabrina can peer into one another’s souls. Maybe it is their humorous exchanges of dialogue. Maybe it is that they share the same strengths — including deep familial loyalty, intelligence and sensuality and vulnerability. Maybe it is that they have their flaws — pride and temper –in common, too, as I’ve already mentioned. It could be any or all of these things together that make me feel that they belong together despite the very different lives they lead before they meet, and make me want to see them find happiness together.
IV. The Conflict
Another of the things I loved in this book was that even after they are very attracted to one another and things get pretty intimate between them, Rhys and Sabrina are still quite reluctant to marry each other. They realize that chemistry isn’t everything, and that they may not have enough in common. Their marriage starts off on unsteady footing because they both feel trapped to some degree.
Likewise, I loved Rhys’ determination to lead a separate life from Sabrina. I know Jayne felt that some of his actions in the book’s middle section made her less sympathetic to him, but I really enjoyed the way these actions made me feel his conflicted emotions toward his marriage to Sabrina more intensely. So often in romances rakes settle down with a speed and commitment that seems unlikely to me, given their past. This was not the case here, and that made the book more compelling to me than many other rake reformation stories.
Sabrina’s realization that attempting to build a marriage with Rhys might lead nowhere but to heartache gives her conflicted feelings, too, as do the moments when she comes to understand how important it is to Rhys that she behave like a countess rather than a village girl. And when Rhys’s secret finally comes to light, the conflict between the couple becomes even more intense.
All of this is just a long way of saying, perhaps, that after reading a lot of books in which there is nothing serious to keep the hero and heroine apart, it was great to read something like this, where the characters’ mixed emotions were very real and kept me jolted awake and turning the pages to see how things would be resolved.
V. The Way it Made Me Feel
Just as I felt when I read Beauty and the Spy, I’m astonished that a book can sparkle with so much freshness when it follows so many conventions so closely. All I know is that against all odds, this book almost made me forget that I’d ever encountered those familiar aspects before.
As a reviewer, I try to give weight to originality of plots or to books that go unexpected directions. Here the originality of the language, the charm of the characters, the magic of the chemistry between them and the strength of the conflict that threatens to tear them apart were all enough to enchant me so much that, if the plot was not so new, I hardly noticed or cared. I was so entertained, involved and happy that little else mattered.
I’ve tried to lay out my thoughts on how exactly the spell your writing weaves works as clearly and in as much detail as I can; tried to work out for myself and for our readers the secrets of this particular seduction. And though I’ve written what just might be the lengthiest review this blog has seen, I’m still don’t think I’ve got it all figured out. But now I’ve come to that QED we readers rely on in the end: that joyous emotional response that goes to my head like champagne. Proof positive that I’ve just read a keeper. A-.
Sincerely,
Janine
This book can be purchased in paper form at amazon or in ebook form at Books on Board or Fictionwise.
Wow. Now I have to read this book. Just to see what inspired such a lovely review.
I hope you enjoy it too, Sherry. I think I wrote such a long review because my enjoyment of the book gave me so much to think about. It doesn’t surprise me when I fall in love with a book that has all the elements I care about in place, including an original plot. But when a book hews as closely to conventions as this one does, it is a very unusual thing for me to give it such a high grade. I think I was gobsmacked by the way Long made me fall in love with her characters and their journey despite the fact that it didn’t go to many unpredictable places.
Very nice review, Janine, although I will admit that this book was not such an unequivocal winner for me. The ultra-cliched match-up between the jaded rakish nobleman and the innocent vicar’s daughter was a black mark in my book from the get-go, and I found it just a little too convenient how Rhys’s deep, dark secret intersected with Serena’s past. This plot contrivance was even more amazing (and improbable) than the connection between Kit and Susannah in “Beauty and the Spy”. It must be a *very* small world indeed in Regency England.
I agree that Long has talent enough to make tired material seem fresher than it should by rights. I also love her writing style. She is one of the few who delights me with her way with words. I also liked the fact that Rhys’s secret was something really serious, but was less impressed by the fact that he never tried to make amends for his past wrongs until the repercussions affected him personally.
Thanks, Elle. I can’t say why the rake-and-virgin pairing was not a black mark from the beginning for me, but perhaps it has to do with the fact that I approached the book with lowered expectations. That is, I thought it would annoy me more than it did.
Yes, the story does rely on a coincidence but because Long hinted at that early on, I was able to accept it. I find I am much more willing to suspend disbelief early in a book than later on. That is, if something unlikely is intergral to the premise of the story, I can overlook it. It’s not that different for me to overlook a coincidence that is part of the premise as it is to overlook the premise that a vampire is the hero of the story even though I don’t believe in vampires and their existence seems even more improbable to me than the coincidence of intersecting pasts.
Regarding Rhys’s failure to make amends sooner, I didn’t have such a hard time with that.
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He was only thirteen years old when he did what he did and he lost his mother and one of his younger sisters very shortly after that. In that sense, the remaining sister probably was very necessary to the story (though I still wish she’d made an appearance), because for Rhys to make amends sooner would have ruined her life and I can easily understand why someone who was orphaned at thirteen or fourteen would be unable to do that much damage to his only close relative and to his other remaining relatives.
I can also see that as the years went by and he got older, it would become harder to speak out because the secret would by then be enormous. I felt that Long did a good enough job showing that Rhys had a conscience by having him try to drown that conscience in alcohol, women and opium. Quite possibly his motive for fighting in the war had to do with that as well.
Perhaps all this could have been clarified a bit more but I think it would have been very tricky to do so. Had Long tried to do it in Rhys’s POV, it could have seemed like a lot of “Poor me” excuses. On the other hand Sabrina was too angry once she knew about it to think all this through. And none of the other characters knew about it.
At the end of the book another character says that Rhys was a victim in what happened too, and I think there is some truth to that. Had he been older when he did what he did, I might see it differently, but since he was only thirteen, I can see how easily he could have been manipulated using his sense of responsibility for his mother and sisters, and I can understand that by the time he matured into a man, he was so used to protecting his sister as well as to living with guilt and hating himself for it that his numbing lifestyle also became a barrier that kept him from taking action.
Oh, I forgot to add that I completely agree with you about Long’s writing style. Her words are such a pleasure to read. I wish there were more authors who thrilled me with language as much as she does.
Oh, wow! I enjoyed reading that review more than I have some books.
And the TBR keeps growing and growing… (cue the Energizer bunny)
Thanks, Ann! That’s a huge compliment! :)
You do give very thurough and entertaining reviews. I was wondering if you would be interested in reviewing one of my top favorites. The Sapphire Pendant is a powerful contemporary love story – I couldn’t put the book down until I finished it. http://daragirard.com/books/sapphire.php
I know your review would do this love story some justice.
I look forward to more.
I agree with a lot in your review. There were some really lovely moments, particularly between Sabrina and Rhys. I also agree that Rhys has very little atoning to do–he didn’t think up the plot, after all. But the book was ruined for me by the plotting and the secondary characters, and the story gets noticeably weaker as soon as it leaves that narrow focus on Sabrina and Rhys–a sign of wallpaper history, IMO.
My review in a nutshell:
Melissa, I took a look at the excerpt from The Sapphire Pendant at the link you posted, and I’m not interested in reviewing the book at this time.
I’m a finicky reader; I don’t think that comes across that much from my reviews since I give a lot of high grades, but that’s because there are so many books that I don’t finish and don’t review. I don’t feel it would be fair to review them after reading only a chapter or two, so I don’t review them.
I used to spend a lot of money on books I didn’t enjoy, but I’ve become better at choosing books I will enjoy by relying on recommendations from trusted friends, and also, by giving a lot of weight to excerpts (far more than I give to covers or blurbs).
Based on the excerpt from The Sapphire Pendant, I don’t think that I personally would enjoy the book. One of the other Ja(y)nes might, and of course I could be wrong in my judgment about my own enjoyment as well, but I have to somehow decide which books to give my limited time and attention to, and this is how I do it.
I hope you won’t take my decision personally. It isn’t meant as any kind of criticism of the book you love. I’ve made similar decisions about more books than I can count. Dear Author gets inundated with review requests and ARCs and we have many books clamoring for our attention. We can’t possibly give them all the attention they deserve; that’s just reality.
I feel a bit on the spot here, since we usually receive review requests by email and our decisions are made more privately. But I appreciate that when you love a book, as you do this one, you want to share your love for it with the world. Again, I hope I haven’t hurt your feelings.
RfP – I have to disagree with you about Long’s secondary characters. I quite love them and think they are far more interesting than the vast majority of secondary characters I encounter in romances. I love how Long will have them go in one direction, and at the last minute, pull a switch, have them surprise me with some unexpected facet or dimension that I didn’t realize was there. I especially loved the villainess in Beauty and the Spy, but I also like the other woman in The Secret to Seduction, and of course, Morley, who appeared in both books.
Regarding the weakness of the historical aspects, I agree the book could be stronger there, and I would love it if it were, but it managed to satisfy me very deeply despite those issues, perhaps because what Long gets right is the historical tone of the dialogue and the characters’ thoughts. It is interesting for me to contrast this reading experience and review with my reading experience and review of Hoyt’s The Raven Prince, which felt far more anachronistic to me, yet has gotten more acclaim from many other readers.
In any case, the accuracy issue I had with The Secret to Seduction didn’t spoil the later sections of the book for me as they did for you, and I have a friend who actually liked those later sections best (and she is usually quite a stickler for historical accuracy). For myself, I enjoyed the entire book very much. I guess this is my way of saying that though I agree with you that the history aspect of the book could be stronger, I nonetheless feel that I’ve read many other romances that are weaker in this regard, too.
I have to disagree with you about Long's secondary characters. I quite love them and think they are far more interesting than the vast majority of secondary characters I encounter in romances.
That’s really interesting to hear. I’ll have to think more about those characters.
I can see why you love the book–I loved some sections of it, and was frustrated that the whole book didn’t work as well for me. Long has something that caught my attention; I think I’ll try her again a couple books from now.
I find the author’s secondary characters (the villains) far more memorable than the main characters in Beauty And The Spy and The Runaway Bride. As I’ve said on my website, the author is not playing fair if she wants me to root for two pampered blue-blooded beautiful people who never have to worry about being poor or unpopular over ruthless self-made antiheroes and antiheroines who claw their way to the top from their beginnings in the gutter.
If this author decides to write a story with her usual villains being in the leading roles, I’ll personally grab a crowbar and steal the book from the warehouse even before they start sending it to bookstores.
Signed,
The President of the Thaddeus Morley Fan Club and An Avowed Thaddeus+Caroline=4EVER!!!! ‘Shipper.
PS: Please sign the petition to get Cordelia her own book.
LOL, Mrs. Giggles! I’ll be right behind you at the warehouse. I suspect that Ms. Long has a soft spot for Thaddeus and Caroline also, because of the ending she wrote for them in The Secret to Seduction.
I also wonder if you might like Long’s Ways to be Wicked. The hero isn’t poor by the time the story starts, but he did grow up in the gutter and had to claw his way up from it, starting as a thief, if I recall correctly, and eventually becoming the owner of a successful bawdy theater. The heroine is Susannah and Sabrina’s biological sister Sylvie, a hardworking French ballerina who did not grow up wealthy either, and who was the villain’s kept woman.
I thought the book had some pacing issues and that the resolution was a bit unlikely, so I didn’t love it quite as much as The Secret to Seduction, but I still liked it.
Oh, I forgot to add: it’s the villain in Ways to be Wicked who is a rich and pampered blueblood.
I find the author's secondary characters (the villains) far more memorable than the main characters in Beauty And The Spy and The Runaway Bride.
I think that’s a whole different issue than what I was talking about. I agree, in some books the villains are more interesting than the ostensible protagonists. But in Secret to Seduction, the secondary characters who aggravated me were “good” characters (like the sisters) who I didn’t think were well integrated.
Thanks for this beautiful review, Janine. I have been waiting to read this book for many of the reasons you state, but will move it to the top of my TBR pile (which is just below my need to be reviewed pile) as a book to savor.
I must be in the minority, but I just don’t enjoy “historical” romances with historically impossible plots or set ups, and that is what Long consistently delivers. I really wish this writer would take a breath and do some research. Though since so many gush over her books, is seems she never will. *sigh*
I’m sorry, I didn’t get that it was the sister’s integration that bothered you. I did feel that the side plot of their search for Sabrina didn’t fit so well with the rest of the book, especially since it seemed like they should have found her earlier than they did. But their characterizations didn’t bother me. That may be because I read the previous two books in the series and was familiar with Susannah and Sylvie, though.
Robin, I hope you enjoy the book.
Melissa, I don’t know if you are in the minority, since others have complained about this too. For whatever reason, the historical accuracy issue doesn’t bother me as much in Long’s books as it does in some other books (they are not as inaccurate as some, and have enough other strengths that I feel compensated) but I agree that the books would be even stronger if they were more historically accurate.
Wow! I am thrilled to see a review of this book by a person who loved it as much as I did. After a bunch of meh reactions over at AAR, I thought maybe I was the only person who felt the language and emotion were truly above par.
I have had mixed feelings about JAL’s books, but still think she is head and shoulders above many others in her ability to convey true affection and caring amongst her characters, not just lust. The other two in this series were fair and forgettable, but To Love a Thief and this one really shone, IMHO.
Hi, Samantha. I’m glad the review made you so happy. I know how nice it is to find someone who shares your love for a book. Of course I agree with you about the language and emotion, LOL.
I haven’t read To Love a Thief yet (I have it TBR), but I thought Beauty and the Spy was pretty special too. I’ve noticed though that even JAL’s fans are divided as to which of her books are the best.
the sister's… characterizations didn't bother me. That may be because I read the previous two books in the series and was familiar with Susannah and Sylvie, though.
That may well be part of it. It’s often awkward to revisit characters from earlier in a series. While Secret was published a stand-alone, I think it might be better read as Book 3 of the sisters’ story. If I’d already been attached to the sisters, I might have been happy to see them again, balancing out my negative reaction to what it did to the narrative.