Wow. For those chick-lit lovers who like a lot of sex and intrigue as well as a decent plot to follow, Croft definitely delivers. Seduced by the Storm
was an interesting read specifically because I wasn’t sure I actually liked the novel most of the way through. As this is one of several novels exploring the same characters and themes, the transition between the works may be to blame for the initial difficulty in developing a partiality for the characters. Croft leads us into a world of agents, spy work, and saving of the world, but it is the characters and their “unusual” abilities that makes it a hit or miss for readers.
We follow a bio-kinetic woman named Faith as she struggles to identify with an emotional feeling she is not allowed to have as an agent
- love. Her encounter with Wyatt was an unexpected twist to her mission, but not an unpleasant one. Unfortunately, when she finds out
that he's tied to her mission as another “unusual” agent for a different company, the situation becomes emotionally perilous. They must either join forces (while giving into the physical and emotional connection they have) or go against each other as enemies to the death.
Their decisions aren't given a long timetable: the world is being threatened by a weather device that has targeted New York City. In addition, the life of Liberty, Faith’s long-lost twin sister, is tied directly to the success of Faith and Wyatt’s combined missions. As these two give into a tremendous amount of physical yearning throughout their mission, we also follow the lives of several other agents and their individual stories.
The agents are all connected, like family, and as lovers, and their “unusual” gifts make them unique additions to the world-saving team. Ultimately, as a combined force
with each handling their own area of expertise, their chances of success are high.
The plot of Seduced by the Storm
falls quite successfully along the overlapping borders of the sci-fi and chick lit genres,
although the reality behind the unusual gifts is way out in left field and makes the novel a little hard to buy into.
The characters aren't always the easiest to like, but because this is fiction, the originality of
Croft's characters work, and eventually their fictional lives do become interesting.