Seducing An Angel by Mary Balogh ***

Seducing an Angel by Mary Balogh

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Listening to Flosnik read Balogh about the Huxtables is getting on my last nerve. Between the plodding, metronome-timed-sounding narration and the (author's) characters' annoying habit of waaaaay-too much introspection in the form of multiple questions in a row and over-analyzing what-ifs, I've had it up to here [imagine my holding my hand at top of head level] with this combination!

This, the 4th in the 5-book series, is Stephen's story, and he is the angel in question, and the seductress is an alleged axe murderess. He's rather goody-two-shoes and wishy-washy, all in all; she's a widow (remember the axe murder part?) who needs a protector. She sets her sights on him as the one...

Balogh describes the heroine's seductress voice as her "velvet voice" and Flosnik developed an even more annoying tone for that, if you can believe it. But Stephen (hero) and Cassandra (heroine) seem to be fated to be together. Her alleged murder-by-axe is really the most ton-shocking behavior of the 4 siblings, out-doing even the fellow who jilted his bride on the wedding day by running away with her sister-in-law. But things are never quite what they seem, are they?


I think Flosnik has either improved some since book 1, and even there she was not quite as annoying as her Lowell and Garwood medievals, or I am getting slightly accustomed to her plodding, metronome speaking tempo. However, there were still long portions that I talked out loud to her and Balogh: Stop it!

I'm still wondering if it's because I have to listen to Flosnik read it or if Balogh has got a very overdone, tiring way of using character's inner monologue to really beat a dead horse every several pages or so. The character thinks: perhaps I should have worn the red dress. If I had worn the red dress, then he would have seen me and I wouldn't have had to search him out. But perhaps it would have been better for him not to see me, so wearing the gray dress was the better way. Unless wearing the gray dress was what caused her to run into me, so perhaps I shouldn't have worn the gray dress, and should have worn the red dress instead. But perhaps the green dress....

(no, it was never about a dress, but it does go on and on and ON AND ON ad nauseum .)

And questions: Did he think of me? Was it just me imagining him thinking of me? Or was he just looking out the window? And if he was just looking out the window, does he ever think of me? Or could I be fooling myself that he thinks of me?

AD NAUSEUM

I did, I spoke outloud to the audiobook: "NO NOT AGAIN!" I would say when this happened for the umpteenth time. The ending was ok - it almost made me give it a half star more.