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To Tempt a Saint

by Kate Moore

reviewed by Lyndsey Leask

January 2010, 304 pages, Publisher: Berkley, ISBN: 0425233065

There is a fine line between writing a book which is dark in tone - a Regency noir, if you will - and writing one which is simply depressing. Kate Moore's To Tempt a Saint aspires to the former, but in the end, only manages to achieve the latter.

Cleo Spencer has a problem. Though she'll come into a significant sum when she turns thirty, she cannot access her money until then without her trustees' consent. One of her trustees is a banker who believes that women are incapable of managing money; the other an uncle of the evil guardian variety. Living on a meager allowance and rumored, thanks to said uncle, to be mad, she cannot afford to send her younger brother to school, and the uncle is threatening to remove her brother from her custody as a result. The solution? Marriage.

Sir Alexander Jones has a problem. Since his younger brother Kit mysteriously disappeared three years ago, he has been obsessed with finding him and bringing him back home. He investigates every lead he comes across with the help of his other brother, Will, a Bow Street runner. Having concluded that Kit may be living in one of London's worse areas, Xander is determined to install gas lighting there. To do this, he needs some quick cash, but none seems to be available to him. The solution? Marriage.

When Cleo and Xander meet, it seems each has found the solution to their problems. Cleo will marry Xander and send her brother to school, Xander will marry Cleo and be able to light up the city. Xander knows that Cleo's uncle will try to oppose the marriage. In fact, he's counting on it. He doesn't intend to stay married to her; he just needs access to her money now and will pay it back later. The problem? Cleo, unaware of his plan, keeps trying to get her surprisingly attractive husband to make their union real by consummating it.

In theory, the story should have been good. But in practice, it really wasn't. It was incredibly hard to keep reading once I'd started because everything was just so depressing. The book was a deluge of bad things happening to decent people, and somehow the main characters supposedly fall in love in the middle of it. By the time they started declaring themselves, all I could think was “That's nice, I guess.” I didn't look forward to their happy ending because by that point I was already convinced that nothing happy could ever happen to anyone in this book.

Beyond being depressing, this book felt lifeless. A novel needs some energy to it to make it interesting, and To Tempt a Saint felt dead. It was so dull that it made me sleepy. Just when I was about to nod off, though, Cleo would annoy me. She constantly referred to Xander by his full name, even after they were married, and it's only possible to read “Xander Jones... Xander Jones... Xander Jones...” so many times without getting frustrated. In her efforts to make him consummate the marriage, Cleo carries around a pig-sticking knife, which she always refers to in full, causing a second Xander Jones situation. Reading about the “pig-sticking knife... pig-sticking knife... pig-sticking knife...” is incredibly annoying. And her use of said knife was often TSTL.

To Tempt a Saint was neither tempting nor saintly, and certainly didn't make me interested in reading the next book in the series.

Reviewed by Lyndsey Leask