The Most Happy Reader: Blog Tour of Seduction by M.J. Rose

France Book Tours brings us:

Seduction: a Novel of Suspense...

M. J. Rose

Seduction Synopsis

A gothic tale about Victor Hugo's long-buried secrets  and the lengths we go to for love...

In 1843, novelist Victor Hugo's beloved nineteen-year-old daughter drowned. Ten years later, still grieving, Hugo initiated hundreds of séances from his home on the Isle of Jersey in order to reestablish contact with her. In the process, he claimed to have communed with Plato, Galileo, Shakespeare, Dante, Jesus—and even the Devil himself. Hugo's transcriptions of these conversations have all been published.   Or so it has been believed...   Recovering from a great loss, mythologist Jac L'Etoile thinks that throwing herself into work will distract her from her grief. In the hopes of uncovering a secret about the island's mysterious Celtic roots, she arrives on the Isle of Jersey and is greeted by ghostly Neolithic monuments, medieval castles, and hidden caves.   But the man who's invited her there, a troubled soul named Theo Gaspard, hopes she'll help him discover something quite different—transcripts of Hugo's lost conversations with someone he called the Shadow of the Sepulcher. Central to his heritage, these are the papers his grandfather died trying to find.   But what neither Jac or Theo anticipate is that the mystery surrounding Victor Hugo will threaten their sanity and put their very lives at stake.   Seduction is a historically evocative and atmospheric tale of suspense with a spellbinding ghost story at its heart, written by one of America's most gifted and imaginative novelists. Awakening a mystery that spans centuries, this multi-layered gothic brings a time, a place, and a cast of desperate characters brilliantly to life.

Hardcover, 384 pages

Published by: Atria Books

ISBN1451621507 (ISBN13: 9781451621501)  

Author bio:

M.J. Rose, is the international bestselling author of 12 novels: Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, The Reincarnationist, The Memorist, The Hypnotist, and The Book of Lost Fragrances.

Rose is also the co-author with Angela Adair Hoy of How to Publish and Promote Online, and with Doug Clegg of Buzz Your Book.

She is a founding member and board member of International Thriller Writers and the founder of the first marketing company for authors: AuthorBuzz.com.
She runs two popular blogs: Buzz, Balls & Hype and Backstory. Getting published has been an adventure for Rose who self-published Lip Service late in 1998 after several traditional publishers turned it down. Editors had loved it, but didn't know how to position it or market it since it didn't fit into any one genre.

Frustrated, but curious and convinced that there was a readership for her work, she set up a web site where readers could download her book for $9.95 and began to seriously market the novel on the Internet.

After selling over 2500 copies (in both electronic and trade paper format) Lip Service became the first e-book and the first self-published novel chosen by the LiteraryGuild/Doubleday Book Club as well as being the first e-book to go on to be published by a mainstream New York publishing house.

Rose has been profiled in Time magazine, Forbes, The New York Times, Business 2.0, Working Woman, Newsweek and New York Magazine.

Rose has appeared on The Today Show, Fox News, The Jim Lehrer NewsHour, and features on her have appeared in dozens of magazines and newspapers in the U.S. and abroad, including USAToday, Stern, L'Official, Poets and Writers and Publishers Weekly.

Rose graduated from Syracuse University and spent the '80s in advertising. She was the Creative Director of Rosenfeld Sirowitz and Lawson and she has a commercial in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

She lives in Connecticut with Doug Scofield, a composer, and their very spoiled dog, Winka.

M. J. Rose on the web: http://www.mjrose.com/content/

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My thoughts:

When I selected Seduction from my large TBR pile I was not excited. Here was a novel based in a period that, as a Historian, I am not very familiar. Nor was I familiar with the life Victor Hugo outside of his literary works. Then to discover that Seduction is in a series! The fifth in a series!! Let’s just say I buckled up for a read I thought would be rough and long! Well, it still amuses me when preconceived ideas are proved to be so utterly empty. I am not ashamed to admit that by the end of the first page I was completely and utterly seduced by Seduction.

In fact this amazing hook of on the first page is so wonderfully written I had to quote it below:

“Every story begins with a tremble of anticipation. At the start we may have an idea of our point of arrival, but what lies before us and makes us shudder is the journey, for that is all discovery. This strange and curious story begins for me at the sea. Its sound and scent are my punctuation. Its movements are my verbs. As I write this, angry waves break upon the rocks, and when the water recedes, the rocks seem to be weeping. As if nature is expressing what is in my soul… This is the story of a lost man. An exile not just from his beloved country but also from his sanity.“ Now, if something in that paragraph didn't strike an emotional chord nothing will. The seduction of this reader had begun and even on page two I knew that I would not stop reading until I came to the end.

The main story line, though not obtrusively in the forefront, begins when Theo Gaspard, a long lost childhood friend of Jac L’Etoile, the novel’s protagonist, invites her to visit him at his family home on the Isle of Jersey. Jac is easily swayed to make the trip as she works as a mythologist and hosts a television program in which viewers watch her travel the globe in her quest to debunk myths. Jac is often surrounded by the supernatural but she is a skeptic to the core. However the trip to Jersey interest the mythologist in her as she knows the island is known to have connections to the Celts and the Druids, and is home to an abundance cave dwellings, many of which have yet to be discovered. Once Jac arrives in Jersey she finds herself swept into and become a part of a struggle that three souls have been weathering for many births and rebirths.

One of Seduction’s main plot lines involves Victor Hugo and his time spent on Jersey while in exile from France. He had recently lost his daughter to the sea and when a friend came round to tell him that the “newest thing” in Paris was to hold a séance in one’s home. Victor was eager to see experience a séance for himself, but in his heart he hoped he would be able to communicate with his beloved daughter, Léopoldine, who had drowned about ten years earlier. And so began the daily séances in the Hugo home which would last throughout his stay on Jersey.

M.J. Rose takes the reader on a masterfully crafted story-line from present day to Hugo’s day and then to the time of the Celts or perhaps Druids, before the invasion by the Romans. Rose takes her reader on a twisting turning tale that is running at break net speed and then slows only to be churned up again. The plot lines, while distinct, also flow with the others effortlessly. Rose is truly gifted in telling a complex story without making it complicated. Her characters are very human and easy to relate to. Seduction is written in such a way that I felt I too was on a ride that I must see to the end – I was never able to pry the book out of my hands long enough to do anything else. It was that good.

In full compliance with FTC Guidelines, I received a free ARC copy of this book from Atria Books/Simon & Schuster via France Book Tours in exchange for a fair and honest review. I was in no way compensated for this review and the thoughts and opinions are my own.

This review qualifies for the following challenges:

Historical Fiction Book Review #21