Series: Society of Sirens, #1
Tropes & Traits: illegitimate hero; frustrating heroine
Publication Date: 04.28.20
Genre/Setting: Historical
Rating: 3/5
Seraphina Arden is well-known for her scandalous views on equality, her penchant for taking lovers, and her propensity for wine-drinking. She hopes to open an institute to train women to work in trades usually reserved for men. To raise funds, she’s decided to publish her memoirs exposing her sordid past and the powerful man who set her on the road to ruin. She’s singular in her purpose, holding her friends as family and ensuring her lovers are gone by morning.
Adam Anderson is a widowed Scottish architect spending the summer working on a project in Cornwall. He has two children and a burgeoning business to protect. He can’t afford an affair and certainly not with scandalous Seraphina Arden. But she’s spending the summer in her native Cornwall as well and her proposal of a no strings attached month between them proves too tempting when Adam has been burying his passionate nature and grief for the past three years.
A simple fling rapidly grows far more complicated and emotional, igniting feelings neither expected to experience again. But when Sera learns that Adam’s career is staked on the good favor of the man she’s on the cusp of calling out in her memoirs, she must decide between her cause and her heart.
I have so many feelings and thoughts about this book, so you may be in for a bit of a ramble. I was so looking forward to it but I must say it was both what I expected and a bit of a disappointment. There can be no doubt that this book is impeccably well-written, if a bit wordy in places, but in my opinion at least, it isn’t really a romance at all. This is more of a feminist treatise that I would expect to read in a literature class or discuss in a serious-minded book club and it certainly did its job in that respect. It put me into the frame of mind of the true feminists who lived in what was a terrifying time for women in which we had virtually no rights at all and illuminated the contrast between the true meaning and purpose of feminism and today’s watered down, easily offended version. But it was not a romance.
Sera’s relationship with Adam took a backseat to literally everything else in the book and Adam was never given much opportunity for growth or depth. He was one of the sweetest and most thoughtful heroes I’ve read and as such I wound up thinking that he deserved better and more than he wound up getting from Sera. I wanted him to have more of a backbone and stop coming back for more each time Sera continued to treat him horribly. This was definitely Sera’s story with Adam just thrown in for spice. There wasn’t much substance to their story as a couple and not much was ever really developed, though I don’t think their relationship was really so much the point here. Honestly for all her strong principles and arguments, which I agreed with, Sera herself just struck me, at least most of the time, as immature and emotionally stunted, drowning her feelings in alcohol, throwing childish tantrums, and exhibiting what was, at its core, a selfish nature. Much of the time I felt she was just using Adam and based on the whims of her unstable emotions with no care to how she might affect him. At one point she even tried to force herself on Adam, which to me is rather unforgiveable; it certainly would be so if the roles had been reversed, and that made my respect for her ebb even more. She acted as if she and other ruined women were the only ones to have ever suffered in life and that was grossly irritating to me. By the time she started to consider his feelings even a bit, it was a little too late for me, especially given the fact that she still tried to keep things from him.
There was a ridiculous amount of back and forth between these two that got slightly after a while. The first past of the book especially was very slow paced and that pacing was really increased by large infusions of angst, which always annoys me, though I will say it was very well done here and felt very real and raw (which is probably why it was so hard to read.) Also, make no mistake, just because this wasn’t exactly a romance don’t think it wasn’t steamy; it was, very much so and not for those who prefer to remain on the sensual side. That said, I wound up feeling like those steamy scenes didn’t further the relationship between Adam and Sera, with Sera ultimately keeping Adam at arm’s length or to some extent distant, even by the epilogue and that made the ending rather unsatisfying for me.
I loved the idea of role reversing with a female rake, but the enjoyable part of reading a rake is that he reforms for that one special woman. I don’t think Sera ever did this or even came close. Even at the end she was still married to her cause which, while respectable, ultimately made her seem a bit self-focused to me, especially given her lack of consideration for the potential respectability of her child. While Sera certainly exhibited some redeeming qualities, she never really became likable for me and still always expected much more from others than she was ever willing to give of herself.
The main problem may be that this was a bit too grave and serious in tone for me right now. Overall, this was a well-written book and given that it ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger for one of the supporting characters I’ll probably continue the series even though this one wasn’t quite for me.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Adam Anderson is a widowed Scottish architect spending the summer working on a project in Cornwall. He has two children and a burgeoning business to protect. He can’t afford an affair and certainly not with scandalous Seraphina Arden. But she’s spending the summer in her native Cornwall as well and her proposal of a no strings attached month between them proves too tempting when Adam has been burying his passionate nature and grief for the past three years.
A simple fling rapidly grows far more complicated and emotional, igniting feelings neither expected to experience again. But when Sera learns that Adam’s career is staked on the good favor of the man she’s on the cusp of calling out in her memoirs, she must decide between her cause and her heart.
I have so many feelings and thoughts about this book, so you may be in for a bit of a ramble. I was so looking forward to it but I must say it was both what I expected and a bit of a disappointment. There can be no doubt that this book is impeccably well-written, if a bit wordy in places, but in my opinion at least, it isn’t really a romance at all. This is more of a feminist treatise that I would expect to read in a literature class or discuss in a serious-minded book club and it certainly did its job in that respect. It put me into the frame of mind of the true feminists who lived in what was a terrifying time for women in which we had virtually no rights at all and illuminated the contrast between the true meaning and purpose of feminism and today’s watered down, easily offended version. But it was not a romance.
Sera’s relationship with Adam took a backseat to literally everything else in the book and Adam was never given much opportunity for growth or depth. He was one of the sweetest and most thoughtful heroes I’ve read and as such I wound up thinking that he deserved better and more than he wound up getting from Sera. I wanted him to have more of a backbone and stop coming back for more each time Sera continued to treat him horribly. This was definitely Sera’s story with Adam just thrown in for spice. There wasn’t much substance to their story as a couple and not much was ever really developed, though I don’t think their relationship was really so much the point here. Honestly for all her strong principles and arguments, which I agreed with, Sera herself just struck me, at least most of the time, as immature and emotionally stunted, drowning her feelings in alcohol, throwing childish tantrums, and exhibiting what was, at its core, a selfish nature. Much of the time I felt she was just using Adam and based on the whims of her unstable emotions with no care to how she might affect him. At one point she even tried to force herself on Adam, which to me is rather unforgiveable; it certainly would be so if the roles had been reversed, and that made my respect for her ebb even more. She acted as if she and other ruined women were the only ones to have ever suffered in life and that was grossly irritating to me. By the time she started to consider his feelings even a bit, it was a little too late for me, especially given the fact that she still tried to keep things from him.
There was a ridiculous amount of back and forth between these two that got slightly after a while. The first past of the book especially was very slow paced and that pacing was really increased by large infusions of angst, which always annoys me, though I will say it was very well done here and felt very real and raw (which is probably why it was so hard to read.) Also, make no mistake, just because this wasn’t exactly a romance don’t think it wasn’t steamy; it was, very much so and not for those who prefer to remain on the sensual side. That said, I wound up feeling like those steamy scenes didn’t further the relationship between Adam and Sera, with Sera ultimately keeping Adam at arm’s length or to some extent distant, even by the epilogue and that made the ending rather unsatisfying for me.
I loved the idea of role reversing with a female rake, but the enjoyable part of reading a rake is that he reforms for that one special woman. I don’t think Sera ever did this or even came close. Even at the end she was still married to her cause which, while respectable, ultimately made her seem a bit self-focused to me, especially given her lack of consideration for the potential respectability of her child. While Sera certainly exhibited some redeeming qualities, she never really became likable for me and still always expected much more from others than she was ever willing to give of herself.
The main problem may be that this was a bit too grave and serious in tone for me right now. Overall, this was a well-written book and given that it ended on somewhat of a cliffhanger for one of the supporting characters I’ll probably continue the series even though this one wasn’t quite for me.
I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
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