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Silk Is For Seduction (2011)

by Loretta Chase(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0061632686 (ISBN13: 9780061632686)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Avon

series

The Dressmakers

review 1: This book was really good. I love strong heroines and Marcelline really fit the bill. The story revolves around Clevedon and Marcelline. Clevedon had been abroad enjoying his bachelorhood while he can. He received a reminder of his marriage engagement to Clara Fairfax. During his stay in France, he meets the cunning Marcelline and was entranced by her. Marcelline's top priority is to her family and her business. She travelled to France to hunt down ideas for her dressmaking business and also to secure the future duchess of Clevedon's patronage. She designs excellent dresses but she lacks the patronage to really cement her business in London. The ladies of the ton have a mob mentality and only flock to wherever is popular. She figured, along with her sisters, that the futur... moree duchess' patronage would be their big chance. What starts out as a cold and cunning mission turns complicated as it becomes evident that Clevedon and Marcelline have great chemistry together. Clevedon is fascinated with Marcelline and vice versa. Marcelline did not want to dally with her future customer's husband and high-tailed it out of Paris once she finished her mission. However, Clevedon could not stay away. He finds many reasons to see her again and again. With each encounter, they push their limits until they finally end up making love on her workroom table. Amidst these events is the competition between the dressmakers. Hortence have planted a spy to steal the designs and generally caused headaches and troubles for the Noirot sisters. These troubles culminated in a fire when the spy is discovered. She panicked and to ensure her safety, she started fighting back. The fight ended in a fire, which brought the Noirot into the duke of Clevedon's residence. This started a scandal but Clevedon excused it as a charitable act. Sophie did an excellent performance on Longmore. It was really good. It also brought together Clevedon and Lucy, which became another connection between Marcelline and Clevedon. Despite numerous promises to stay out of each other's lives, they couldn't keep away. Clevedon finally took the step, with much reluctance, to propose to Clara. However, his cold shoulder, inattentiveness and passionless actions towards her was too much to bear. She declined his offer in a speech that was cheered on. Clevedon heaved a sigh of relief after being turned down. He went on to propose to Marcelline with a speech from the hear. However, she also turned him down. She has a scandalous past and she did not want to drag him down. He did not know this and was understandably upset. When she finally decided to tell him of her past, he brushed off her worries. He would have her any way her can get her. This book was great by virtue of Marcelline. Clevedon wasn't that great. He was really flawed. He was arrogant. He expected that whatever he desired he would get because he was a duke. He really barged in on Marcelline's life without thought. Marcelline called him out on it. He was shortsighted in his actions and left others to clean up after his messes. I wish he was a better man but it didn't destroy the book. He wasn't amazing, he wasn't great, he was just a person. On the other hand, Marcelline was amazing. She is cunning and mercenary and she owns up to it. She had to be cunning to survive. She comes from a family who survived through their wits and nothing else. She was charming as hell. She was passionate with her art. She was just amazing. I like her family of con-artists. I liked that they used brains. She used her talents to lead a respectable life. She was a good person despite her belief that she has bad blood. This book had me at the very start. The marriage in the prologue was charming in its own way. It was adorable and the rest of the book lived up to it.
review 2: Well, knock me over with a feather….Clevedon: ‘Is that why you have come? For the ideas for your shop-the ideas to make you the greatest modiste in the world.’Mrs. Noirot: ‘I am the greatest modiste in the world.’Well, self-confidence and enough haughtiness to utter a statement like that….who would not love Marcelline?She had gypsy parents, slept with a man who died and fled to England to take care of her sisters and her daughter the only way she knew how. Miason Noirot. “…..I felt we’d be safer in London, though we were nearly penniless. But I went to the gaming hells and played cards. You saw how I won in Paris. That was how I fed and housed my family when we first came to London, three years ago. That is how I started my shop. I won the money at cards.”She pursued Clevedon at Paris to make sure that she was the modiste that got the contract for his future duchess’ trousseau and wedding finery and she succeeded. Well, she succeeded in impressing him that is.Succeeded a little too well, in fact. He, the doll, took care of her during a storm across the Channel and made sure that she reached home safely.Clevedon is, well, he is my kind of hero.“I think nobleness of spirit….and morals…..and ethics….and scruples….those sorts of things are all very well in their place. To a point, you know. But beyond a certain point, I think they make me bilious.”[[“It doesn’t agree with me. I tried to be good. I tried not to be my father. I tried to live up to Lord Warford’s standards. Then one day I realized it was pointless, and I’d had enough….”I love an unnoble hero as is. I am fed up of self-righteous bastards who stand up and judge everyone else and think that because they are duke the lesser ones ain’t worth looking at. I hate them. He wasn’t like that. He didn’t wallow in guilt or showed himself to be a pretty little rich boy who was just misunderstood.Oh no.None of that for our hero.He knew his mind. I reckon, any duke that brings milliners to his home and to hell with the world does. I was also most pleased when he found the guts to go and propose Marcelline without making himself look like an idiot first by fighting or being uncharacteristically childish. He was always to-the-point, make-no-bones type of man. And that’s how I love’em!He met her at the Opera in Paris and then again at the casino and the card table. By then he was hooked. He came back to England with the sole purpose of proposing to Lady Clara, who by the way, blew my head off with her dignified denial of his proposal.I demand her story!But that’s talk for later.And little Miss Errol the Princess of Albania!God, the theatrics that Lucie Cordelia is capable of!This book has it all. The sass, the fire, the fashion, the racism that keeps us indignant but hooked to the novel nonetheless. It makes you want to laugh and wring your hands at someone and then laugh again. It’s that good.Total value of money and so vastly entertaining it makes you wanna read it in a single sitting.Plus, what I love the most is that Marcelline is so in her element, so into fashion, so confident, so amazingly artistic, that she keeps you hooked.Heroes are all well and good- the tall, hard, prime specimens of masculinity that they are- and they do do it for me but it’s really the heroine that does it all the way. That makes me want to read the next page and then the next and then the next and keep going on until there was nothing left to read no more.Marcelline did it for me. 5 stars for this book! less

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