Saya Lopez Ortega

She is a sort of must-have. Calling on her services is on a par with offering oneself a spa weekend or a cruise to Costa Rica.

The Seduction Expert

Sara Uribe

This is my first read by Saya Lopez Ortega and I thought I was really going to love this book. The description of this book sounded so compelling and very interesting. I was so excited to read this book. I thought it was going to be exciting, light hearted, fun and so romancy. Boy was I wrong. The first chapter of this book lost me. But I kept reading because of all of the positive reviews this received and I thought it might get better. But it didn’t.

The Baroness is narcissistic and cares about no one but herself. She is selfish and cold. Her job had nothing to do with helping others or really have her help others seduce someone they are interested in. She’s basically conning women to come to her for help. There is no romance in this book. The Baroness HATES men (actually everyone) and wants nothing more than to be rid of them all. She looks down on everyone no matter who they are. No one is on her level. There is no romance and I’m very surprised on how many positive reviews this books has. Maybe I’m missing something?

⭐️⭐️ read.

Thank you to VSP Publishing and NetGalley for giving me this book for an honest review.

Janna Niemi

General info

Meet the baroness, the woman who solves other women’s marital issues. She has everything planned out to the T. She does everything and anything to reach her dreams and goals. Read this, to see her work through the perfect plan that she simply calls life. 

Things I liked

For me, the story itself was quite interesting. It is astonishing that there are people like the baroness in the real world as well. People who are so greedy and need money and fame so much that they will do anything to get it. For me, love is essential for marriage and I simply cannot understand people who will do it just for money. 

Things I didn’t like

The character of the Baroness is to me something ugly. Don’t get me wrong, she is a complex and thoroughly thought of character but I just don’t like people like her whether they are fictional or real. I also do not like the way the Baroness treats all the people around her. 

Conclusion

All in all, this is an interesting book. I really like the plot and the whole story but I did not like the characters much. At least not the main characters. I still kind of want to read the next book in the series but it will not be essential for me.

* ARC received from the publisher via Netgalley

Sahi K

CW: Lesbophobia and lesbian erasure, ableist language and fat shaming.

I had even forgotten that I had requested the ARC of this book more than an year ago, when it suddenly got approved this month. I obviously wasn’t interested anymore, but I also didn’t wanna abandon it and it has a lot of gushing reviews calling it an empowering feminist novel, so I wanted to give it a try. And wow was I absolutely wrong to do so.

The MC who is a narcissist dominatrix with a superiority complex, is a seduction expert and calls herself The Baroness. We never even get to know her actual name - surprisingly, not even her fiancé refers to her my her name once in the book. She is a self proclaimed devout feminist who utilizes her superior skills to provide services for women who are suffering due to their lying, cheating partners. She wants power and wants to rule over everyone, and she will resort to all sorts of intimidation tactics to gain the money and power, including manipulating and marrying a billionaire. I guess I could understand how her character could feel empowering because she was taking down men who were destroying the lives of women without any care for consequences, but I just didn’t like the execution of it all. 

The story might have worked if it had stuck to the true nature of the main character, without her having to assert over and over again that she was a feminist. But except her lip service about being in the business of helping women, none of her thoughts ever reflected that. She is completely judgmental about every single client who comes for a consult, is utterly disdainful about the problems these vulnerable women may be having, and it’s very clear in her internal monologue that she is only tolerating them for the money and power trip they can provide. She calls her own employees (who are obviously female) little people, looks down upon them, is completely indifferent to their issues or maybe even enjoys the fact that their lives are not as sorted as hers, and expects them to be completely submissive and grateful to her. I’m not saying that female characters can’t be manipulative or power hungry, but I just found it very ironic that she would just assign all her narcissistic behavior to her feminist principles despite having no respect for any other woman in her life (except probably the ones who are totally onboard with her machinations and are powerful and important for furthering her interests). 

The only good thing I found about the book is that it’s short and very quick to read. If it was any longer, it would have definitely been a DNF. The way it’s written also feels very formal and sometimes, quite high handed which didn’t work for me. For a book espousing to be empowering for women, it has a good dose of lesbophobia and lesbian erasure. There are multiple instances where the main character questions why anyone would want to be a lesbian, she has a very sneering response to someone when she realizes they assumed her to be a lesbian, and at one point she says that women who don’t find their Mr. Right inevitably end up falling into lesbianism. I was just horrified when I read this all. There is one instance of a sex addict being referred to as “psycho” which goes unchallenged despite the other character acknowledging that it’s a mental illness. But what pissed me off most was one particular incident of blatant fat shaming where our delightful MC mockingly thinks if another particular character needed two seats in the flight and if her office furniture is sturdy enough to seat her. If this wasn’t an ARC, I would have stopped reading right at that moment. 

After reading all the gushing reviews for this book and it’s high rating, I’m just confused if I even read the same book. Despite the main character’s assertions, I found her to be exactly opposite and even downright insulting to be called a feminist, and I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone who wants an empowering feminist read. I found it to be full of harmful stereotypes and it could even feel triggering for some readers. I also find it very very wrong to refer to this book as a romance, because there is nothing but manipulation in this story and it doesn’t belong in the beloved romance genre. I’m not sure what audience this book is trying to cater to, but it definitely wasn’t for me and I call myself a feminist and am all for gender equality and women empowerment. I have also never ever written a rant review before, but this book made me very angry and I just wanted to share all my feelings about it.

Tiffanie Dang

I was sent a free eBook copy of this in exchange for an honest review.

I was pleasantly surprised by this short book! The Baroness is such a commanding figure, who is feminist to the core and uncompromising in her principles. It was really refreshing to read, but then the tension was palpable when the antagonist is introduced. Even with things falling apart near the end, the Baroness manages to come out of things relatively unscathed and with a new plan for her future to thrive. There are a few problems with formatting and some typos, but overall, I definitely recommend this!

Ruth Parker 

This book was supposed to be empowering for women, but there were times I just found it a little much. I feel like the idea of punishing men in order to raise up women is disrespectful. we should help to raise up each other, not take others down. This books message seemed to be, women = good, men = bad. 
I love women and I love men; we should love and respect each other, not use our status or gender to pull each other down. Really disrespectful. 
It was really my cup of tea. It also felt like a rip off of the Devil Wears Prada (with too much added 'feminism') which is one of my favourite books. I don't like rip offs! 
I received an ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Leelynn Brady

Disclaimer: I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you to VSP Publishing for this free copy.



A lot of the reviews that I briefly read before deciding to read this book compared the main character "The Baroness" to the woman we love to hate (Miranda Priestly) in The Devil Wears Prada. Not to mention, if you look at the cover for this book, and the movie cover for TDWP, they have some similarities.



I would say that the key difference between Miranda and The Baroness is that I actually liked parts of Miranda. The Baroness, not so much. When the main character is absolutely full of themselves and reminds the reader at almost every other thought, it starts to get tiring. However, the faults of The Baroness don't completely take away from the book, and I do think that some people will definitely like it.

There are moments where The Baroness claims to be a feminist, wanting to be a champion for women in Paris (her headquarters) and possibly spanning her reach across Europe and the United States if the money's right. However, I feel like her thoughts and her feelings, words, etc. contradict her actions. For example:

"Femen." Instrument of power, funded by a mysterious oligarchy in order to lessen the respectable image of women. "I hold nothing in common with them." No need to strip to reign. I do it with class and effectiveness. "Neither do I support their fanciful activities."

One of the things about feminism is that fellow feminists aren't supposed to slut shame, or ridicule other feminists for their methods of whether taking their clothes off or not is the way to go. And yet that's one of the things she does throughout the novel. As long as her clients are paying her fees, they have no idea what she really thinks about them. Is that a real sisterhood mentality? I don't think so.

But then again, sometimes a good villain is someone that you just don't like. A part of me wants to see what happens next, to see if all her hard work is going to pay off and whether or not she can salvage what's happened to her, and I'd love to see if she can pull it off. I mean, if she's a good enough villain, I should be impressed.

Vanessa Bintou

Edit 13/07/2019

This is not a book. It's like some awful person put his horrible thoughts on paper and then used Google translate.

I am furious with the author/publisher with the mess they have created. Instead of trying to fix the issues this book has, they try to make people change their reviews. 

Something Is wrong like some of my gr friends say, but my question is what?? 

Please read the following reviews and comments from the publisher:
1. link
2. link
3. link 

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I hate it when I can't finish a book.. Honestly, even when I don't like it, I push myself through it, but this was one of these rare cases that I couldn't. I really tried, but I DNF at 60%..

The main character is a woman named Baroness, who lives in Paris and works as a consultant of love. I expected to be something like the movie Hitch with more feminism... boy I was wrong.. She is supposed to help women find love, feel more confident or help them with a break up, but what she does is constantly talking like they are idiots and criticize everything about each and every woman and man she meets.. Furthermore, she only cares about money, power and she is a cruel, mean, narcissistic, and frankly, I feel like she is the worst example of a woman in the world. In every single page she was mean and kept talking about how amazing she is and how much money she has or wants...

The storyline is completely unrealistic and the writing really bad.. The narrative was like the inner thoughts or maybe a diary, but not executed right, and some of the phrases didn't make sense.It felt like a poor translation of a bad book... I actually can't believe that this is described as one of the most anticipated romance books of 2019.. I am very upset because I am not sure if the writer wanted to make fun of the women who only care about money, appearances and power, or this is her approach of life and love... 

Thank you to the publisher and the NetGalley for the ARC I received, in exchange for my honest review.

The Seduction Expert

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