Avon, $6.99, ISBN 978-0-06-134029-1
Historical Romance, 2009
Meet Greyden Kane, the Duke of Ryeton. He is the most unfortunate man in the world. Gorgeous, rich, privileged, and spoiled, he was once upon the time the toast of the town and the favored stud of women everywhere… until someone got mad at him and hired some goons to scar his face. So now the poor dear shuns the Ton. Not because he’s worried that people would point at his scar and roll on the ground laughing until their sides ache, oh no, it’s because he now knows of and despises the hypocritical ways of the Ton. Imagine that – they giving him, a skanky man slut who slept with their wives and daughters, the cut! They are such losers!
He is still invited to “exclusive” sex clubs, gambling clubs, and such, and he spends his free time whoring, drinking, and gambling, but you have to admit, it is heartbreaking to see such a beautiful man brought low by circumstances in his life that are beyond his control.
Grey wants Rose Danvers, the daughter of his best friend. But because he knows that he cannot torture Rose with his presence and cause the poor darling to be laughed at, he knows that he has no choice but to seek out lookalikes in his favorite sex club and pump his angst away. As for Rose, she loves Grey, so much so that she willingly gives him the milk for free when the story opens during a masked ball at Grey’s favorite sex club. She wants to have just one night with him… but when she realizes that she can’t get him out of her system, she decides to do what every romance heroine in this kind of stories does: she changes the rules, decides that that night is all about meaningful passions after all, and starts beating herself up because she knows he doesn’t love her back and he must be thinking of another woman when he was sticking it to her here, there, and everywhere… It’s the Avon Romantic Boyfriend Test all over again. Not that it matters, because she’s already given away her virginity for nothing, so it’s not like there is any other conclusion to this story. Doomed is any hapless rake who slakes his pleasure in the hoochie of a romance heroine: he has fallen into the most effective matrimony trap ever known to man.
Reading When Seducing a Duke makes me become acutely aware of every strand of gray hair on my head, because I must be getting too old for this kind of stories. Really, 375 pages of a grown-ass man whining like a big baby is too much for me to take. When Grey melodramatically proclaims himself to be “marked for life”, it’s not like he is marked by syphilis or something that is actually worth whining about. He has a stupid scar on his face and he lost his friends as a result, boo hoo hoo. Oh, look, I’m playing Darling Violetta’s Sanctuary on the world’s smallest cello for Grey. Why don’t he come closer so that I can hammer him with the cello?
You know, I think I need a treat after reading this painful story of a grown-ass crybaby. Why don’t you take this hammer? I’ll break Grey’s left kneecap, you’ll break the right one, and then we will both point and laugh when he really starts to cry for his sainted mother.
