Review: One Night for Seduction

One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Three and a half stars

Diana Middleton is a singular young lady. Obsessively interested in order and justice she masquerades as a barrister's clerk testing weights and measures in local shops. She has campaigned (anonymously) for reform of the anarchic weights and measures system in the UK which has 27 different definitions of a bushel.She knows her eccentricities could cause her cousin, and guardian, Thaddeus Middleton to suffer the scorn, ridicule and perhaps ostracism from the ton, should they be known. In order to avoid having her activities curtailed or prohibited she is determined not to marry and has deliberately made herself into a wallflower.

Thaddeus is one of three founders of the tavern and brewery known as the Wicked Duke, one night he laments to his two best friends, the Duke of Eastleigh and the Duke of Colehaven that his ward is unmarriageable and dares the Duke of Colehaven to find her a husband by the end of the season.

Colehaven finds Diana to be a world of contradictions, dressed in such a way that she blends into the wallpaper at society balls, she nevertheless has a keen mind and proves more than capable of engaging him in wide-ranging discussions of politics and sexism and weights and measures (of course). Pity Diana's outspokenness and appearance preclude her from being the Duchess of Colehaven ...

I'm always a sucker for a brilliant heroine, constrained by society who teaches the hero a lesson, especially when he thinks he's rescuing her and this is no exception. However, I felt the novel was too short and didn't really have time to develop the romance between them.

I received a free copy of this book from the author, via NetGalley, in return for an honest review.

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