How To Host a Seduction, by Jeanie London

I very much enjoyed the first Blaze I read by Jeanie London, Secret Games, so I decided to give her How To Host a Seduction a try.

Step 1 – Know the target.
After Ellen Talbot walks out his door, Christopher Sinclair vows to get her back in his bed. He remembers everything about their three incredible months together—all of her sexual fantasies and longings. Now, he’s using that to tempt her….

Step 2 – Set the stage.
What should have been a simple corporate training session turns intense when Ellen discovers her partner is the one man whose sexy memory she can’t forget. And being with him again just stirs up all that incredible heat….

Step 3 – Don’t retreat.
She can’t resist him when he starts using his intimate knowledge about her to entice her again. So she’ll indulge herself for these few days, then walk away at the end. But she doesn’t count on his determination to have her…for keeps!

It sounded intriguing from the back cover copy, but unfortunately, it was very disappointing. A C-.

HTHAS had a couple of good things going for it. First and foremost, the hero, Christopher, who was really a lovely guy, almost too good to be true. He fell hard for Ellen from the minute she saw her, and after a couple of months dating, he was ready to marry the woman. When this didn't produce the reaction he was expecting, and Ellen ran in the opposite direction, he concentrated all his efforts on winning her back... not by bullying her or manipulating her (not that much, anyway), but by courting her.

The main problem with this was that I simply couldn't conceive what he saw in Ellen. She's one of the most irritating heroines I've read lately. Rigid, humourless, obsessed with her silly rules, she's a woman whose entire life seems to be focused on not attracting the attention of the press.

It didn't help that I felt that the whole fear of the press she had going on was a tempest in a teacup. It would have been believable if that so horrid "bad press" would be something of the caliber of "Senator's daughter arrested for drug-dealing", but Ellen seemed to fear headlines like "Senator's daughter marrying a perfectly respectable and successful man after dating for only 3 months!!!" Oh, the horror!

The book is chock-full of love scenes. These are well-written enough, but there just isn't much sexual tension, and I really got the feeling that all those love scenes just didn't add anything to the character development.

I liked the setting of the story. Having them participating in a murder mystery reenactment / training seminar was fun, but the author managed to make the actual investigation of the murder pretty boring. I never got a feel for the protagonists of that story within the main story, so the endless conversations about the different steps of the investigation never became interesting.

A shame, really. This could have been so much better.