In Which I Review To Seduce A Sinner

It took me a really long time to get in to this book.

Like, a really really, week-long, 100-page long time.

Melisande Fleming has been pining after Lord Vale for years, and when he is jilted at the altar for the second time in the span of a year, she seizes the moment and asks him to marry her.  And because this is his second time being jilted in a year, Vale says "yes."

And that's basically it.  I mean, it's really really not, but that was my problem for 100 pages.  The perspective was very limited, and I was irritated.  However, unlike in the last such book I read, the perspective in this book genuinely did open up and take me in.

Vale is a war vet, having served in the British Army during the French and Indian War (side note: I think this might be the first Colonial period novel I have ever read), and he has a little (read: a lot) PTSD.  His unit was sold out and captured and tortured by Native Americans.  This could have been really tricky (stereotypes much??) but there's a good dose of cultural relativism delivered by the man most brutally tortured during the captivity:

I've studied it since.  It's their way of dealing with prisoners of war.  They torture them... Just as we hang small boys by the neck for picking a grown man's pocket.  It's simply their way.

The Duke spends a great deal of the book obsessed; obsessed with finding out who sold out his regiment, and obsessed with finding out what makes his new wife tick.

Yes, his new wife.  Melisande is awesome in a number of ways, but it's mostly her strength that is appealing.  She's in love with this dude who buys her earrings because he hasn't taken the time to notice that her ears aren't pierced, and she never whines or indulges in self-pity.  She's had her heart pretty badly broken in a previous relationship and still has the courage to ask the man who has the most power to damage her to marry her.  She honestly doesn't give a damn when she runs in to another lord's mistress in the park, talking to her and her children openly and warmly.  Melisande just keeps showing up, hoping (not naively) that everything is going to get a little better every day.  She takes her life into her own hands and doesn't hold anyone else responsible for her happiness.

She also has the patience not to freak the eff out every time Vale is a douche.  And Vale is a douche a lot of the time.  Melisande comes to this book fully formed and developed, all we do is see what all of that means.  Vale grows, though, from a rake who can't remember the names of all of the women he's bedded who literally can't think of anything but getting justice for this fallen comrades, to a man thoroughly and honestly devoted to his wife.

We begin the book knowing that Vale had a horrific experience in the Colonies, and knowing that Melisande had a relationship that went very, very wrong.  In the end, though, we know all of the pertinent information.  We just find it out when the other characters do.  I like that.  That's how the limited perspective thing should work.

Another side note: Melisande has a terrier named Sir Mouse, who is at once obnoxious and seriously adorable.  As the proud mother of a metabolically-challenged, height impaired beagle, I would like to say that this is the most realistic portrayal of domestic animal behavior that I have read recently.  Possibly ever.

To Seduce A Sinner is the second (?) book in The Legend of the Four Soldiers series, one book obviously set before this one, and one is well on its way by the time this story comes to a close.  Last week I never would have thought I'd end up saying this, but here goes: I'm really excited to read the rest of these books.