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A Secret Affair Mary Balogh 9780385343305 Books

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A Secret Affair Mary Balogh 9780385343305 Books

I've read this entire series, dying to get to Constantine's story. I've been on his side from page one of the first book. This series has been up and down for me. The first, First Comes Marriage (Huxtable Quintent Book 1) was a very good story. The third is one of my all-time favorites ~ At Last Comes Love (Huxtable Quintent Book 3). But with the second book, Then Comes Seduction (Huxtable Quintent Book 2), while generally a good story which was written well, I had trouble with the hero and even, to some extent, the heroine. In book four, the characters just didn't seem in sync to me and I could never overcome this problem. And then I finally got to the long-awaited story for Constantine.

Con had been the thread holding the entire series together, I had been fond of him from the outset, and I was anxious to read a marvelous story in which he got his HEA. But what did Balogh do? She got lazy and borrowed a premise from book four. Since I'd just read #4, it was deja vu. She really let Con, and us, down. He deserved an original story and he didn't get it. The heroine was pretty good, though she sometimes behaved stupidly, and the plot was so so.

The story *was* okay, I did enjoy, immensely, Con's HEA and I loved the epilogue. Those are the reasons for the 3-star rating.

Enjoy your reading! :)


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A Secret Affair Mary Balogh 9780385343305 Books Reviews

This is a story that can make you cry. The writer tells a story that involves an understanding that being handicapped does not mean being unable to provide compassion and love. How appropriate to understanding civility and its meaning. The characters are very richly developed.
Prior to reading A Secret Affair, I was a ho-hum fan of Balogh. I think I had previously read another Huxtable novel - can't even recall the title at the moment - but the previous novel had just enough of Constantine Huxtable to intrigue me into reading his story. Wow! Let me just say, his story was good enough that I now want to re-read the first four novels of the Huxtable Quintet.

If you've read any other novels about the Huxtables, you'll know that Constantine is the black sheep of the family. The bad boy is always intriguing, especially when we discover early on that he is, naturally, not quite as bad as you would previously have believed. Balogh continues to add multiple facets to Constantine's character as the story moves along, adding emotional issues and human fraility into the tough bad boy that everyone else assumes him to be.

Hannah was a fantastic heroine. Balogh puts a lot of thoughtful and insightful details into her story, and we end up seeing Hannah with her public persona, her 'real self, seen only in private, and we discern why there are such marked differences between the two. This may be considered a spoiler, but let me just say, it is a rare gift for an author to describe being beautiful as a problem in such a way that the reader actually empathizes with the character who 'suffers' from being beautiful.

Having only read one other Huxtable novel prior to A Secret Affair, I didn't feel cheated by skipping around and reading this one. I can only assume other readers will feel the same. A must-read for Balogh fans, and if this is the first Balogh book you are considering, I think you'll find this book to be an instant favorite.
When I started to think about writing this review, I thought I would give the book four stars, despite the fact that I very much enjoyed it. On first reading, it seemed a little flat, and at least one of the other characters seemed to have changed almost beyond recognition. So I reread it, and changed my mind. This is a very good book.

This book has all the things that Mary Balogh books generally have interesting characters who are not just romance-novel cliches, a plot that relies more on the relationship to drive it forward than on outside villains (as in many of her best books, the villains here are all long-dead), and extremely high quality writing. This book is about two things, under the guise of being a romance novel. First, it's about how everyone's world looks different from the inside than it does from the outside. We see people constructing public facades to hide their true selves, and we see outwardly confident humans wondering if everyone feels like a fool sometimes. Second, it's about the occasional necessity to accept defeat and loss to achieve a greater victory. The book explores these themes on a variety of levels, while telling a charming love story.

On rereading, I discovered, too, that Vanessa had not changed beyond recognition, but that my expectations of her had stalled eight years in the past when she was a new wife, a viscountess, and new to polite society, whereas now she is many years married and a duchess. Of course she has developed more austere company manners, and when in private, she does revert to her more informal and charming self.

My only remaining complaints are that this is the last Huxtable book, and that Barbara and Simon only got to be a sub-plot. I wanted to know more about them, and there's never anything wrong with a good book that leaves me wanting more. Highly recommended.
Mary Balogh is at her best when she writes about two people whose relationship ends up addressing a deep-seated pain in their lives. It's as much a story about two people coming together as it is about two lovers, and A Secret Affair is no exception. I own this book on and a paperback version at home, and I find myself re-reading it every few months or so. The dialogue and relationship flow naturally, and Hannah and Constantine are real people with real issues that they resolve together.
I've read this entire series, dying to get to Constantine's story. I've been on his side from page one of the first book. This series has been up and down for me. The first, First Comes Marriage (Huxtable Quintent Book 1) was a very good story. The third is one of my all-time favorites ~ At Last Comes Love (Huxtable Quintent Book 3). But with the second book, Then Comes Seduction (Huxtable Quintent Book 2), while generally a good story which was written well, I had trouble with the hero and even, to some extent, the heroine. In book four, the characters just didn't seem in sync to me and I could never overcome this problem. And then I finally got to the long-awaited story for Constantine.

Con had been the thread holding the entire series together, I had been fond of him from the outset, and I was anxious to read a marvelous story in which he got his HEA. But what did Balogh do? She got lazy and borrowed a premise from book four. Since I'd just read #4, it was deja vu. She really let Con, and us, down. He deserved an original story and he didn't get it. The heroine was pretty good, though she sometimes behaved stupidly, and the plot was so so.

The story *was* okay, I did enjoy, immensely, Con's HEA and I loved the epilogue. Those are the reasons for the 3-star rating.

Enjoy your reading! )