Books

by Madeline Hunter

This book is another in the romance series that includes The Saint. If I failed to mention it in the previous review, let me take a moment now to thank my cousin Elizabeth for introducing me to this series. Quite a switch from the days of our youth…or rather our “more youthful days”…when Romance was all I read and Elizabeth would come to me for tales of lust, intrigue, and true love.

The guardian theme is continued in this book. This time the heroine, Diane Albret, is orphaned as a child and entrusted to the care of the mysterious, dangerous Daniel St. John. She is raised in a French orphanage and only encounters her guardian once a year. Those meetings are perfunctory; Diane is able to convince everyone that she is younger than she really is so she can stay in the only home she has known. One day, when Diane is about 20, St. John notices that she is no longer the child that she claims to be and removes her first to Paris then to London. Diane hopes to find a position as a governess. St. John hopes to use Diane to ensnare a British aristocrat with nefarious tastes in a dangerous game of secret identities and 20-year-old vendettas. Needless to say, they fall in love and all well-laid plans go astray as old misdeeds and secret pasts are revealed in thrilling, life threatening, adventure.

I don’t think I have a preference between The Saint and The Seducer. If you pick them up, you should pick up The Seducer first since it’s first in the series and Diane and Daniel make cameo appearances in The Saint. They both end well. And they both have interesting story lines…especially in the secrets that the protagonists agonize over defending.