Wicked Pleasures

Penny Vincenzi

Average Rating 6/10 (1 Review)

All families have secrets. This family hid a secret which would tear it apart.

Sexy, glamorous and fun, Wicked Pleasures is the story of a brother and two sisters who find out that they all have different fathers: none of them Alexander, Earl of Caterham, who was married to their mother for almost twenty years.

It is a story of the power and the greed of the mega-rich, as the great family banking business upon which fortunes are won and lost, comes to the brink of ruin, and family ties are tested to the utmost.

'Old Sins set new standards of literacy and intelligence within the traditional boundaries of the genre. Wicked Pleasures is even better... it should sell in lorry - loads - these pleasures may be wicked, but they won't rot your teeth or make you fat.'

'A wickedly good read.'

Review by Chrissi (010602) Rating (6/10)

Review by Chrissi
Rating 6/10
On my holiday last summer I took two of the titles by this author and waded through them both. I became very frustrated with the characters, and this story is no exception. It is a great thick book, just like the others that I have seen, and at nine hundred and odd pages, is probably twice the length that it needed to be. I had realised the bulk of the shadowy plot within the first third of the book, and spent the rest of the story waiting for the dreadful secret to come out.

I think that the problem that I have with these stories is that they take a bright young woman in a privileged society, and give her ambition not to be a clone of her mother, throw in a few obstacles to make her path difficult, along with a totally unsuitable husband, and a love who is a danger to her perceived position in society, then they drag it all out for ages.

The only difference with this book to the others that I read was that here, we see the families growing up with the secret, and through them we find the truth. The tortured lady, though, is still a major part of the story, even though she passes away quite early in the book. That is the only twist that I had not seen, but it does make sense, in that it creates a villain to blame for all that went wrong with the life of that poor young woman.
Chrissi (1st June 2002)