Huzzah! A Balogh that left me feeling happy, not disappointed.
Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh
(2009, Regency Historical) 6/12/2010
Grade: 4.5
Lady Paget is desperate. The ton thinks she’s a scandalous murderer, but she’s destitute and her only option to to find a wealthy man and become his mistress. She chooses “angelic” Stephen Huxtable, the Earl of Merton, and his kindness makes her feel things she thought she could never feel again.
Definitely the best in the series so far. After three stories of perfect heroines, we finally get a heroine who has real problems, and who isn’t the perfect angel. (Since this is a Balogh, of course she’s not really bad, but she definitely has some hard edges, especially compared to the saintly Huxtables.) And Stephen was an interesting hero – his essential niceness forces him into situations that he isn’t quite expecting, and makes him turn his assumptions upside-down. There was real character growth for both of them. The book had nice pacing, other than a slow section in the last part of the book, and it managed to avoid most of the saccharine happy-wives-and-babies family reunions which Balogh loves so much This didn’t quite make it into keeper territory, but it’s the best book Balogh has written since Slightly Dangerous.
Right now, I don’t think this is a keeper. But I felt the same way about Slightly Dangerous, and it grew on me, and became a keeper on the second reading. So this one is going on my keeper shelf for the time being, even if it’s still on probation.
Karen Wheless
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