The Seduction of Sara, by Karen Hawkins

I'm now starting The Seduction of Sara, by Karen Hawkins now. It's an Advance Uncorrected Proof (Not For Sale, it says right there on the cover. It seems the previous owner didn't mind. To my defense, I bought it online and never saw that until I received the book.), and the quality of the paper is much, much better than regular paperbacks. Much heavier too, so it cost me lots more to ship it from my Miami address to Montevideo!

Blurb:

She needs a husband . . .

Sara Carrington has no choice -- her brothers have decided to marry her off to the next respectable man who offers. But Sara has a different plan. If she must marry, she wants a man who won't care what she does, someone who will give her the freedom she craves. The second she sees England's most notorious rake, the rakish Earl of Bridgeton, from across a crowded ballroom, Sara knows she's found the perfect man.

He wants a mistress . . .

Never has Nick received a more tantalizing proposal--but because of his past, he's sworn never to marry. Instead, he agrees to give the innocent chit instruction in the art of seduction to help her plan succeed. But when "demonstration kisses" become burningly real, and Sara turns the tables by applying her lessons to him, the infamous rake is in danger of falling in love -- with the miss he'd only meant to bed!

Posted later...

The Seduction of Sara was not a bad read, but I didn't really like it. It felt very clichéd, very romance-novely. It didn't help that it was set in Regency England, a period which already is one of the most cliché-ridden of all periods for romance novels.

It's a pity, because this had the bones of an interesting novel, but it just felt sketchy. I didn't really believe in the characters, they didn't feel real (as I said, they were just walking clichés), and I felt their motivations were never too well explained. It seemed like they just did stuff in order to advance the plot. Sara's friend Anna was a bit more interesting, but after this disappointing read I don't think I'll be reading her book, even if it did get a DIK review at AAR.

The plot was good in that it was mostly character-driven, just the way I like it, but I felt the execution was lacking. My final grade is a C+.