35. Then Comes Seduction

By Mary Balogh
Rated 5 Stars
Amazon

 The best thing about Mary Balogh is that you always get what you expect.  I have never had the urge to either not finish one of her books or throw one at the wall.  After my two previous disappoint reads this turned into a real comfort read.

Jasper Finley, Baron Montford, had never lost a wager until he met Katherine Huxtable. But when he bets his friends that he can successfully seduce Katherine, after their first meeting, he not only admits defeat but also patiently listens to Katherine as she verbally decimates his character, then sends him on his way. When the two meet again three years later in London, Jasper finds he is still intrigued with the beguiling Katherine, so he proposes another wager: he will make her fall in love with him. Katherine knows the smart thing to do is to send Jasper away once again, but somehow she finds the idea of romance with a dangerous rake irresistible.

DNF - Coventry

By Helen Humphries
Rated No Stars
From Library

I started and then gave up on  Coventry, by Helen Humphreys a novel of WWII.  It just didn't seem to be going anywhere.  I gave it 50 pages but if a book can't pull me in by then I am not willing to invest anymore time and effort into it.

EDITORIAL REVIEW:

Humphreys's lethargic latest depicts the intertwining lives of two British women during the world wars. Harriet and Maeve meet on the streets of Coventry, England, in 1914. Both are of troubled mind: Harriet's husband has just left for the battlegrounds of France, and Maeve can't shake a deep sense of loneliness. The women share laughs on a bus ride, but afterwards their lives continue on different paths. Harriet's husband, Owen, goes missing (and is presumed killed) in action, and Harriet spends the next two decades mourning his loss. Maeve becomes pregnant out of wedlock and works a string of odd jobs to raise her son, Jeremy. In the chaos of the German bombing of Coventry in 1940, Harriet befriends Jeremy, who, at 22, stirs intense memories of Owen. Together, they search the town for Jeremy's mother and forge an intense bond. Humphreys's characters are given to poetic tendencies that occasionally yield interesting insights on the nature of loss and change, though the cast tends toward the indistinct and the narrative feels too in service of the historical record.