This was some unholy combination of desire and friendship and something else, because apparently when you took workaday lust and combined it with affection and threw in garden-variety honesty, you got something new and totally different.”
― Cat Sebastian, It Takes Two to Tumble
At the start of the novel, Captain Phillip Dacre returned home from a two year voyage with the royal navy. His dutiful wife, Caroline, passed away while he was at sea, and he braced himself to face three children he barely knew in a home he didn’t miss. He appreciated Caroline, but losing her was more akin to losing a friend than a partner. Phillip was more torn up about losing his true partner, McCarthy, his first mate, in a storm at sea eight months earlier.
After the death of their mother, the three children (a thirteen year-old and two nine-year-old twins) dealt with their grief by running feral through the village and their estate. The former housekeeper hired nannies and tutors who then quit as the children did everything they could to scare them away. Two weeks before the captain was to return, Ben Sedgwick, the local vicar, was volun-told by his future father-in-law to set the Dacre house in order and bring the childrens’ reign of terror to an end.
As another reviewer put it, this was like The Sound of Music, but without the Nazis. While it was similar to the film in that the father was a strict, military widower, Phillip adjusted far more quickly to the predictable chaos of his household in hopes that his children would recognize that he was not the enemy. Ben, on the other hand, was not like Maria. Ben was capable and focused and only wanted the peaceful, easy, reliable life that he lacked growing up when, at an early age, he was forced to become the caretaker for his four younger brothers. Engaged to his best friend Alice, Ben’s future plans began to crumble as soon as he started falling for Phillip.
I want my Cat Sebastian novels to be predictable, and this one came through in the best way. While the timeline of Ben and Phillip’s romance felt rushed, it wasn’t more rushed than most other romance novels I’ve read. Ben was a total sweetheart and had the more compelling arc. I hope that in future novels, we’ll find out what happens to Ben’s ex-fiance Alice. Only good things, I hope.
This is the first book in the Seducing the Sedgwicks trilogy.
