Quadrille

The Love and Temptation Series, Book 5

By: M. C. Beaton

Narrated by: Lindy Nettleton

Love and jealousy abound in this playful romance, set during the British Regency.

Everyone in the ton knew that Lord Hubert Challenge had married country mouse Mary Tyre for her dowry, but no one had yet guessed that Mary had actually fallen in love with her husband! And she was willing to try anything - sumptuous clothes, a saucy manner, even flirting with another man - to get her handsome husband's attention…until she learned that two could play at that particular game.

©1981 Marion Chesney (P)2013 Blackstone Audiobooks

All badly behaved characters in an unpleasant book

This is very different from the sweet happy romantic debutante stories from the author. This one is full of badly behaved stupid characters driven by jealousy and manipulating each other. The protagonist's husband is basically an a-hole.

There are some life lessons and thought-provoking bits that may make it worth reading, but be prepared to be annoyed. The book could have conveyed these lessons without the back and forth negative twists.

Maybe MC Beaton got tied of writing positive nice characters and straight-forward happy storylines and wanted to find a challenge in writing negative twisted characters, but this was too negative. Even the romantic scenes are followed immediately by a hurtful twist, such that you cannot enjoy the rare positive scene. Nothing positive in the storyline is not the way to go.

It wasn’t bad at ALL!

I let the bad reviews keep me away from this for a long time!

I needn’t have worried. It was delightful.

In fact, I really liked that the (SPOILER!)
original married couples from the beginning of the book all stayed together by the end! Nice change.

Have fun, enjoy 👍

annoyed

I got so annoyed with parts of this book that I noticed I was just grumpier in general until I finished it. As usual Nettleton was a great, but I struggled with dislike of Challenge throughout the entire book. Just not for me.

Idid not like the characters

I have liked the other stories in the series, but I did not find the characters likable enough to care about in this one.

A mindless hoot

Tally ho! This author is the best. Fun, predictable and humorous. I love all her stories.

Awful

I've almost read all of Chesneys regency period novels I have about ten more to go. This one was just terrible!

The WORST main characters

Wow! I really didn't like this book. Put me in a terrible mood and I couldn't even finish it. The "heroine" was frivolous and annoying, while the "hero" was physically abusive and masochistic. I usually like M.C. Beaton's books but this one was terrible with no redeeming qualities in my opinion.

Worst story EVER

I’ve never felt compelled to leave a review before but this book is TERRIBLE!!!! Narrator is shrill, the amount of times rape and ‘socking her in her face’ is mentioned is unreal. ‘ Oh Hubert! Not my dress! oh no Hubert you’re ripping my dress! Ohhhhh Hubertttttt’ GAG!!!! Don’t save you haven’t been warned

Dreadful people - ICK

MC Beaton's regency stories are usually peopled with less likable characters and contain more abusive situations than is typical of the genre, but usually there is some change and redemption by the end of the book. There are NO sympathetic characters in this book nor do they ever become likable. In fact, I grew to dislike them more as the story went along.

One distasteful aspect of some Beaton stories is violence to women. This book has both casual and deliberate violence toward women. Because I'd not previously encountered a Beaton book this awful, I continued to listen to the end hoping for better, but I was heartily sick of both main characters and the book itself by the time I got to the end.

It makes me leery of listening to the next one I downloaded...

So very Irritating!!!

Lindy Nettleton saved this story. It’s such a pleasure to listen to her but the main male character is such a jerk!!! And that is an understatement. I wouldn’t waste a credit.