books: silk is for seduction by loretta chase

I put this one off since I've been in a Gellis and Heyer mood for a while and there's no use switching in genre between styles because you just end up confused. Also, Gellis' A Woman's Estate just put me in a bad mood.

However, Loretta continues to be awesome. For context on why I love this author, earlier review here.

Silk Is For Seduction

( silk is for seduction )

Again, not her strongest book by any means, but a fun, fast read.

Kindle sales on books by Loretta Chase:

Isabella - $2.99 - the prequel to the Carsington novels, this being the Earl of Harcourt himself and his courtship of Isabella, they who spawned several novels about their sons. This is one of her earliest books and it shows big time, but it's not terrible, one, and if you are a completionist and were curious about the entire backstory of the Carsington men, it's a good read. And it's stuffed with Surprise Revelations! a anti-hero (Loretta just loves to make sure her villains could be redeemable in a future sequel) and to be fair, it's not her weakest work.

The English Witch - $2.99 - this is her weakest work. See what I said above about the redeemable villain? Yeah, this is his story. It's weak, and it drags occasionally, but it also is, I think, her first attempt to play with imperfect, rather unethical heroes and heroines that aren't evil, just, you know, unethical and manipulative but still good people. But I do not deny that this one I got through only because of what she was trying to do here and nails in her later books and I was curious to find out where it started. It could be considered the genre spiritual predecessor to Silk Is For Seduction, Last Night's Scandal, Captives of the Night, and the rather inexplicable Your Scandalous Ways. (For the record, in Regency trope, Last Night's Scandal is the best of them; Captives of the Night is, again, not Regency at all; I'm honestly not sure what the hell it is, which is why I love it beyond reason.)

Lord of Scoundrels - $3.99 - this is an update that apparently was supposed to fix typos. I didn't notice typos before, but this update did not help, but if you can stand a few times early on that paragraphs repeat--and near the end, a page repeats--this is one of my favorite books. It's probably the closest Chase comes to a classic regency in so far as boy marries girl and lifts her into wealth and ease. How they go about it is about as non-classic as you can get, up to and including; pornographic watches, Russian icons, blackmail, extortion, ruining reputations, bloodsucking lawyers for Greater Justice, a shooting, a psychosomatic injury, and possibly the first time I've seen any novelist tackle, with sympathy, a parent's desertion (I would almost recommend it just for that bit; I've never seen any Regency romance both subtextually and textually address sympathetically the motivations that might surround a mother who leaves her child; hell, half the damn plotline is built on it).

Coming in June: Scandal Wear Satin which I am going to say is either going to be about Clara and her newly discovered fashion sense and backbone, or Marcelline's sister Sophie the scandal-rag spin artist. It's a toss-up.