A Lesson in Seduction

Marlow Family #4

by Susan Napier

Was he a shy guy…or playboy?

They met at the airport. He wore a suit and carried a briefcase. He seemed quiet, a little shy. Definitely not the type to flirt with a fellow passenger—even if she was famous actress Rosalind Marlow!

His name, Roz discovered, was Luke James. She was determined to discover more about him…such as why he appeared to be following her. And was he as innocent as he seemed? What he really needed was a lesson in flirtation—and, on impulse, Roz decided to be his teacher! Luke was a fast learner. In fact, Roz soon discovered that he didn't need lessons at all. He could teach her plenty about the art of seduction!

Genres: Romance, Harlequin Presents, Contemporary Romance, Harlequin, Category Romance

283 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 1996

About the author

Perhaps being born on Valentine’s Day was an omen that Susan Napier would become a romance writer. This New Zealand author has written over 30 Mills & Boon category romances since 1984. Napier and her husband Tony Potter met when they both worked at the Auckland Star newspaper. After they married, she left the newspaper to work for a film company where she learned the art of dialogue. After the birth of her sons, Simon and Ben, she was a freelance scriptwriter for documentaries. It was soon after that she decided to try her hand at writing the romance fiction she dearly loved.

She and her husband still live in the home they bought in Auckland shortly after their marriage.

Reviews

[StMargarets · Rating 3 out of 5]

The heroine in this one is what the kids these days would call "extra." She's a larger-than-life personality, an actress from a famous theater family, and she's been shipped off to a resort because she was involved in a "scandal" with a politician's wife.

The heroine also has a stalker as well as a tabloid problem, so it probably is a good idea to get away. The hero is the computer geek/nerd-but-not-really who keeps staring at her. They wind up at the same resort and it is at this point the heroine decides to liven up her stay by teaching the hero how to seduce women.

It's a strange scenario and really didn't work for me. The author keeps us guessing as to the hero's real identity and purpose so that made it interesting. I just couldn't warm up to the heroine.

Boogenhagen has all the details in her excellent review.

[boogenhagen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re A Lesson in Seduction - Susan Napier's final book in her Marlow Family Series tells the story of actress Roz - who is the non-identical twin sister of Olivia, the h from Winter of Dreams.

Roz started some smack in the last book that rebounded fairly epicly on Olivia, since SN has a great sense of either fair play or she just likes to torment her h's, it is Roz's turn to take her whacks.

Roz has a serious stalker when the book starts and a politician's wife had a heart attack in Roz's hotel room where there was a large wad of money scattered around and the Press thinks they have a Right to Know what exactly is going on. The wife of the politician had to be carted away in an ambulance and Roz has decided to keep her mouth shut in the mode of the Never Complain, Never Explain mindset.

Even the very intruding and interrogatory combined might of the Marlow Family Patriarchs, namely Roz's parents, aren't enough to get Roz to give a clue as to what is up. There is nothing to do then, but ship Roz off to a distant island resort and wait for the dust to settle and hope the die hard members of the Press Corp will stop hounding them.

Roz gets to the airport with her brother in law from the prior book and they meet a techie kinda geeky guy who the brother in law knows, his name is Luke. He gets sorta drafted as a companion to Roz on her island excursion and Roz decides that he needs to learn how to woo a woman.

There is some testing of boundaries and getting to know you conversation, Roz makes a few assumptions about Luke's unworldliness that aren't entirely accurate - tho Luke is not a lady buffet sampler and doesn't do a lot of flirting with women. We get island life HP travelogue and some Roz and Luke touristy excursions, while Roz takes Luke's wooing of women education in hand.

Eventually the Treacherous Body Syndrome and the Lurve Force Mojo kick in and Roz and Luke become lovers. There are seekrits seething under the surface tho, Roz has cause to believe that Luke may actually be her stalker, but the big lurve club extravaganza clears Luke of that, Roz is relying on her intuition that tells her Luke is not the stalker is hiding from.

Roz and Luke are still reluctant to share their innermost thoughts, until word comes that Roz's stalker is dead. Apparently he committed suicide a few weeks earlier and his body was recently found. This prompts Luke to reveal that the politician's wife who collapsed in Roz's hotel room is actually Luke's aunt and he wants to know what is going on between her and Roz.

Roz still won't say anything, she gave her word to the poor politician's wife when it seemed like she was gasping out her last breath, and Roz doesn't EVER go back on her word. Roz decides a future with Luke is hopeless, his aunt's seekrit could be very damaging, so she flees back to New Zealand to see if Luke's aunt is recovered enough to talk yet.

Roz loves Luke by now, but she doesn't think she can have him. Luke is an orphan and wants a family and Roz is sterile after a bout of pelvic inflammatory disease. Plus there is Luke's aunt's deep dark seekrit and Roz can't bear to keep seekrits from the man she loves. In Roz's estimation, it is all sharing or nothing and she can't share the aunt's plight with Luke.

After a 30 hour flight to get back, Luke is waiting outside the aunt's hospital room when Roz finally arrives. (He got direct connections.) Roz still won't tell Luke what the big seekrit is, but Luke figures most of it out for himself.

The big seekrit is that Roz's stalker is Luke's aunt's seekrit son that she had as a teenager and ended up adopting out.

Luke's uncle, the aunt's husband, is a big time Family Values Politician and the aunt is very scared that news of her illegitimate child could either ruin his political career or break up her marriage. The news that he turned out to be a creepy stalker of a famous actress would also make everything ten times worse.

The money came from the stalker guy and when Roz met the aunt, she wanted to give the aunt the money to give it back.

(Roz feels bad for having a stalker, she feels like his stalking may be her fault, something Luke tries very hard to talk her out of believing.)

The aunt was really agitated when she talked to Roz, probably because she had just found her son's body, and then she collapsed and the whole situation went pear shaped. Roz had to flee and then met up with Luke and they fell in love, but Roz doesn't really see a future for them unless the aunt wants to confess all.

Luke decides that he doesn't care what Roz can't see, he loves her, she loves him and tho his aunt may never reveal her deep dark seekrit, Luke wants to be with Roz and she admits she wants to be with him, so we leave the two of them declaring they believe and trust in each other for the big HP HEA.

This one was interesting, but I thought it was a bit melodramatic. Then again Roz is an actress and she obviously likes drama, her big goal, which she is in the process of achieving, is to play Lady Macbeth.

Luke was a very nice H and tho I am not really a fan of tutoring H's in the arts of love, Luke was very Alpha when he needed to be and I thought he and Roz worked well together for the most part.

The tone of the story jumped around a lot too, but it is the final Marlow book in the series and worth a read if you run into it for an okay HP outing with a rather abrupt HEA.

[*CJ* · Rating 2 out of 5]

“A Lesson in Seduction” is the story of Rosalind and Luke.

When famous actress Rosalind attracts a stalker along with a scandal, her family convinces her to take a vacation to the famous islands of Tioman.
Reluctantly agreeing to go along for the sake of her twin, she meets an awkward accountant at the airport named Luke James. Initially amused, she soon realized he is smarter than he seems.. and is he following her?
Soon his naivety coaxes her into being his teacher, but as secrets start being revealed, can she maintain her trust in the handsome stranger?

Honestly, the book started out excellent. An eccentric and loving Marlow family manipulates the wild child into taking time off. She meets the hero and their initially banter is very meet cute. We know he’s hiding a secret but it’s revealed only at the every end.
I felt the chemistry could have been explored more- I really felt sad about the heroine’s past and sterility , and that the hero readily accepted it- but I didn’t feel their love. The heroine forgave the hero way too fast, and it was heartbreaking that we didn’t get an epilogue, especially as we saw Roz experience Olivia’s symptoms.
So because of the incompleteness of the book, it’s just overall average read for me.
Safe
2/5

[DamsonDreamer · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give SN high marks for doing her best to subvert some of the alpha heroic cliches in a few of her books, of which this story is one. They don't always 'hit the spot' because we're all conditioned by the cliches and also sometimes they seem a bit off. Nevertheless it's good to throw in a curve ball now and again. The actor h, Rosalind (of the thespian Marlow clan) is a full on 'pistol' type with a clutch of vulnerabilities and a stalker. Let us pause a moment at this point in solidarity with the many women who have been and who are in this most frightening situation. It's all consuming and dangerous and respect for Roz managing to stay as brave as she does. Fear not, the stalker does not appear in person in the narrative.
The H, Luke is an accountant with an adoption back story, together with a religious upbringing, young widowhood and a lot of triathleticism. You get the picture. Arrogant billionaire immoderately passionate manwhore Mediterranean prince cookie cutter H he is not. The plot involves a complicated interweaving of the stalker threat, the adoptive family, the h's twin sister's husband and the h "teaching" the celibate, mostly inexperienced H how to up his romance game. It was slightly head scratching at times.
It's set on Tioman island where they filmed South Pacific (I didn't know about this place before. I looked it up but it involves many hours on a bus and a ferry to get to so is unlikely to go on my must see destinations list).
It didn't really work all that well for me as a romance novel but Roz comes to recognize that Luke is "Intelligent, resourceful, sensitive and strong and deeply thoughtful...he would never betray those he loved". IRL I'd take that over a manwhore billionaire any day.

[LilyRosa · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was an ok read for me though I much preferred the first two books in the Marlow series.

The two characters here weren't that appealing, but I didn't hate them either. The heroine was a full-on, kind of in-your-face character, which would get annoying after a while.

I love that Susan Napier doesn't follow any formulas and writes interesting characters, so hats off to her for giving us the opposite of a man-whore. It was an interesting role-reversal with the hero blushing and awkward a lot of the time, and the heroine giving cocky 'lessons in love.'

But still, I have to admit (shamefacedly) that I don't really like inexperienced heroes. SN has even given us virgin heroes in her stories before, and although this hero was not a virgin, he was pretty close. He was not so much an alpha, but a gamma or maybe an omega. Call me shallow but I prefer a hero who knows what he is doing between the sheets. Virgin or inexperienced men are just not for me in fiction.


The heroine's infertility was heartbreaking, especially since she was vicariously experiencing a pregnancy through her twin. That part of the story left me feeling sad. I wish there had been an epilogue where the couple had fostered or adopted a child. Then it wouldn't have been so bleak for me.

[Kay · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 Stars! ~ Stage actress, Rosalind Marlow has an avid fan that she fears has become a dangerous stalker. When a prominent politician’s distraught wife calls her, telling her that she knows the identity of her stalker, Roz agrees to a very private meeting. Which leads to more disaster, as the woman has a heart attack while pleading with Roz not to reveal to the public the woman’s connection to Roz’s crazed fan. This leads to some very speculative headlines in the tabloids, and Roz finds herself between a rock and a hard place, as she cannot say the real reason behind the private meeting. The paparazzi have become so hungry for the scoop that they even started hounding Roz’s family looking for the answers, which prompts a Marlow family meeting and plane tickets and private accommodations booked for Roz on a special holiday retreat on an island off Singapore. All’s not lost, on the 17-hour trip; Roz meets up with an intriguing man who appears to be shy and an inexperienced flyer. And when their destinations turn out to be the same, Roz takes up the challenge of teaching this reserved man the arts of flirtation and how to seduce a woman. Luke James is a widower, and hasn’t pursued female relationships since his wife’s death. He appears to be overwhelmed by Roz’s audacious personality, and finds himself drawn to her like a moth to a flame. Luke also has a very personal reason for getting close to Roz, one he’s very careful she doesn’t find out about. What will happen when Roz finds out who he really is?

This is another truly enjoyable read by Ms. Napier. Roz makes many assumptions about Luke, some very true, like his inexperience with women. But she learns that not all her assumptions are correct, and Luke turns out to be much more than she bargained for. It’s refreshing to have a strong hero who charmingly blushes! Luke has finally met a woman who takes his breath away and he finds himself wanting her. Roz is also refreshing, she’s not the wild actress the tabloids have painted her, but rather a woman determined to find fulfillment in her life using her career as a starting point. This was a lot of fun to read. Ms. Napier knows how to pen some really hilarious situations, usually with the heroine ending up with egg on her face! But there are some lovely scenes in this one where Luke certainly should be blushing! It was also fun visiting with the Marlows again, and I certainly hope that some day Ms. Napier writes Steven’s and Charlie’s stories, the last of the Marlow siblings

[Leyns · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm a little confused at how I feel about this book. I still don't quite know what to make of the hero. He really annoyed me at times (acting like a condescending know-it-all) and then I admired him at others (he was loyal and quite brave at the very end). I feel like all the issues were not fully resolved. I guess I'm just supposed to accept that love conquers all.

[Cecilia Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

This plot reminded me of Viki Lewis Thompson's Nerd series, with Rosalind mistaking Luke James for a computer Geek.
The story is funny and entertaining.

[Maura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosalind "Roz" Marlow got herself into a pickle by being in the wrong place at the wrong time and now has a secret that isn't hers to tell. But the media is hounding her and she's been receiving letters from an obsessive stalker, so she accepts her parents gift of a trip to Tioman, a tropical island resort. On the way she meets Luke, who comes across as an awkward geek. She takes it upon herself to teach him the art of flirting and eventually learns that he seems to be hiding his true personality, or maybe she'd just made assumptions. At one point, Roz even suspects that Luke might be her stalker. But, as they get to now each other, they become lovers. Luke does have an agenda and reveals that he has a secret, but one that he'll reveal when she explains the secret she has.

The more I read Susan Napier, the more certain I become that I could pick up a book of hers without knowing the author and be able to identify her as the author. Her heroes have a certain feel to them...usually very mysterious, especially when it comes to their feelings and often times hard and vulnerable at the same time. That feels like Luke in a nutshell. Even though we'd periodically get his POV, I still couldn't pinpoint what his agenda was, nor his feelings toward Roz. At the beginning he seemed angry - later he clearly wanted her secrets by the why of it wasn't clear. I can't say for certain if I liked him, but he definitely intrigued me. Especially when he does reveal his secret and you take everything in retrospect - it had me wondering if they really could have a future together. Roz was not a boring heroine either. She was initially annoying with her jumping to conclusions and assumptions about people, but she does seem to learn her lesson (especially about Luke) as time passes. She's definitely a flawed heroine, which ultimately makes her more likeable. She also reveals herself to have some serious integrity. And like me, she also seems to question how she and Luke could possibly have a future together after the secret is out. But Luke's speech, his argument for why they should be together, in the end, was awesome. It was heartfelt, it was convincing and I believed him wholeheartedly. There were moments when I questioned if he could possibly love her, given his attitude, but he convinced me.

[Oborozukyo · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my head, this book was going off in a whole other direction, and the hero was going to be some undercover security expert and interesting and dynamic. Instead of which, he was actually as dull as he appeared. His inability to sort out tickets at the start was never properly explained. And he turned out to be a bit of a stalker.

Not only that, but the heroine planned to keep some fairly major secrets from him forever.

I wasn’t keen on his backstory either

Needless to say, the version in my head was a lot better

[Helen Moulden · Rating 4 out of 5]

A sweet story but the ending was disappointing (for me anyway).

[Di · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't enjoy it. There was potential for more. But the storyline was terribly weak.

[María · Rating 3 out of 5]

After reading Olivia's story, I remember that I had read Ross too. So I re read it. The first time I read it, I don't particularly liked, I mean it was ok.
Now that I know the background of the story was much better, Olivia and Jordan are secondaries character but I have the chance to know that they had married and were expecting a baby!
The story of Ross and Luke was strange but nice. A web of misunderstandings and presumptions that keep them close and appart.
In the end, Luke realiced that he could trust her and he stopped to wonder about the secret Ross shered whit his aunt and adoptive mother. The love was stronger than the secrets...

[Cecilia Rodriguez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rosalind Marlow is a famous actress looking to get away from tabloid media coverage, when she runs into Luke James, a man she thinks is a Nerd. A funny tropical vacation romance with a lesson about judging people based on first impression.

[Rachel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read literally thousands of M&B's (I used to get paid for babysitting with boxes of them!) This is one of the few I still enjoy rereading to this day. A personal favorite.