Seduction: A Novel of Suspense
Jac L’Etoile, the mythologist and television host who starred in The Book of Lost Fragrances (2012), returns in a book that is pretty much the same as that one. Like Fragrances, this novel involves a lost item from history (here it’s a supposedly lost transcription of a conversation the French author Victor Hugo had, during a séance, with someone from beyond the grave). It also, like its predecessor, involves a present-day mystery linked to the historical item (in this case, a man’s wife died in a manner much the same as that of Victor Hugo’s daughter, whose death spurred him to try séances in the first place). But does the fact that the two books are very similar mean this one is bad? Not at all. What sells the book—what sells all of Rose’s books—is not the characters or the plots; it’s the author’s boundless enthusiasm for the material. She believes passionately in her characters and their stories, and we can’t help getting caught up in that enthusiasm. We care about Jac, despite her being not particularly well drawn (she’s more a series of brushstrokes than a real person), because Rose cares about her so deeply; we care about what happens to Jac when she travels to the British island of Jersey and discovers she’s been lured there under false (and mysterious) pretenses, because Rose does. Rose’s growing fan base will probably devour this one. --David Pitt