The Sinner Who Seduced Me by Stefanie Sloane

August 3, 2011

"Trust: reliance on the integrity, strength, ability, surety, etc., of a person or thing; confidence. " Dictionary.com

http://www.stefaniesloane.com/
The Sinner who Seduced Me is the third in the Regency Rogues series, and according to Stefanie Sloane's website, three more have been added to the series for future publication. This was a distressing book for me to review, because I believe Stefanie Sloane is a very talented writer. I was looking forward to The Sinner who Seduced Me with antici...pation. It was the first book I grabbed when my new shipment came in. However, I had some problems with this story and it turned out to be my least favorite of the three Ms. Sloane's written to date.

Spoilers follow. This is a second chance at love story, Clarissa and James were at one time in love, lovers and almost married...and then they broke each others hearts. And, here is where I started to have trouble. It seems that Clarissa's father is/was also a member of the spy group James belongs to. And it appears that her father is having an affair, but not really. Clarissa's mother is deeply hurt, hence Clarissa is hurt. Now, Clarissa expects James to side with her in this matter, but he sides with her father because he knows the truth. However, he can't tell Clarissa because it's secret stuff. He does however, expect her to trust him on this, without telling her anything. And she expects him to be on her side. So, this drives a wedge between them. I thought their reaction to this issue was a tad bit over the top. Now, I believe that when you love someone, there should be trust; however we are human after all, and one should also be realistic with trust. To trust a person you love doesn't mean that they are always going to do what you want or that they are never going to do something that will be hurtful, so to break off a relationship and hate each other for five years because of something that should have been resolved between someone else (parents in this case) seemed to be somewhat excessive to me.

However, I read on. Five years pass, they are thrown together once again and they're still growling at each other. Both of them acting like children. Try as I might, I could not find any sympathy for these two characters. However, if I gave up on my couple, I still have the intrigue in the book.

Good ol' intrigue. And, it was here that a pet peeve reared it's ugly face. It seems that the French need money, so for some reason they are going to force an artist to paint a portrait of a rich Canadian's daughter and then they will get money to do some nefarious deeds. Well, as luck would have it, our heroine, Clarissa is there the day the bad guys come to the artist's studio. The bad guys accidentally break his arm. His painting arm. Well, it seems that Clarissa can also paint, so she decides to disguise herself as a man and with the help of a petulant James, they journey back to England, where the rich Canadian is staying with his beautiful daughter. Ok, I can suspend belief and accept Clarissa as a guy (pet peeve), but, then we are introduced to one of the most irritating obnoxious secondary characters ever, Iris.

Iris, the beautiful daughter of the rich Canadian. Iris, encroaches her way into this book and almost takes over the whole story. She tries to seduce James, she throws tantrums, she wants adventure; they take her to a Cyprian ball, get her out of trouble, to a boxing match, get her out of trouble. They don't take her to the gambling hell. Doesn't matter, because she goes on her own! Clarissa, disguised as a boy and James get her out of trouble, again. Oh, by the way, Iris is dressed up as a boy when she goes on these adventures. So, we have two females disguising themselves (double peeve).

I was also disappointed that Clarissa and James decided not to tell her mother about the infidelity that didn't really happen. So, at the end of the book her parents still remain separated and there wasn't any hint as to whether that problem was going to be taken care of.

I was disappointed with this story. I wanted to knock Clarissa and James' heads together - they were just very irritating. There was way too much bickering from a couple who (in my opinion) didn't have a good reason to be mad at each other. Then there was the dreadful Iris, a distraction to the story and given way too much line space. I was s-o looking forward to this book! Now, this doesn't mean I won't read the next in the series, because I fully intend to...however, I may not pick it up from my pile as fast as I did this time.

Time/Place: Napoleonic France/Regency England
Rating:
Sensuality Rating: Warm!!