Overall

I missed this when it originally came out and didn’t hurry to read it, probably because I hadn’t totally loved the first book in this trilogy, The Designs of Lord Randolph Cavanaugh. It was fine, but nothing that made me look forward to the stories of Rand’s younger brother and sister. The Cavanaughs are the younger half-siblings of Ryder Cavanaugh, the hero from The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh who married Mary Cynster. Their mother was Lavinia, the villain of Taming, so that makes this series slightly more interesting. After all, Lavinia was truly terrible but raised these kids. What would it be like to have such an utter sociopath as one’s mother?

Designs didn’t really address that and neither does Pursuits. I haven’t reread Taming in a few years (it’s on my list when I do the Cynsters next year) so I don’t remember much other than the big stuff. So I was a bit disappointed to see that thread wasn’t really pursued (ha) here. That being said, this is a sweet read that deviates a bit (in a good way) from the formula that I’ve come to expect from Stephanie Laurens.

When I think of Laurens’ books, I don’t think of characters or the romances. I generally return to her writing because I love her mysteries and her plots. She has a basic approach: her heroes are alpha males who pursue the heroines who generally need to be convinced to marry them. Her female leads are always strong-willed, intelligent, and a good match for the heroes. One of my favorite things about the majority of her romances is that hero values the heroine for that intelligence and they often work together side by side to solve the plot. Her Bastion Club was tour de force of these kinds of romances (save the terrible prequel, Captain Jack’s Woman, and the stalker in To Distraction).

This book isn’t quite the same. There’s more focus on the romance, actually, as our lead characters navigate a series of smaller mysteries as they get to know one another better. Lord Christopher “Kit” Cavanaugh is the second of Lavinia’s three sons and has come to Bristol to begin a yacht-building company. His new warehouse lease displaces a charity school run by vicar’s daughter Silvia Buckleberry, the maid of honor at his brother’s wedding. Silvia has a low opinion of Kit at first, but when he helps her relocate the school and goes on to sponsor it, she sees a different side of him.

Laurens also writes a lot of sex scenes in her books — I don’t generally review this stuff because it’s not really what I go to romance for so I end up skipping some of the scenes. But generally her leads have a lot of sex. Pursuits doesn’t have a kiss between her leads for almost two hundred pages, and then the single sex scene is in the epilogue. Instead of lust, Kit and Silvia work together to save the school, find out who’s sabotaging his business, and then who’s following her around Bristol. Silvia is a vicar’s daughter, and Kit respects that. I was surprised by how much I liked that approach. Kit and Silvia weren’t very interesting character on their own, but their romance was sweet and they worked well together. When he finally kisses her, it feels a lot more earned.

The mysteries themselves aren’t super engrossing, but they’re fun to read and follow. There are bits of this book that are a bit overwritten, but that’s part of Laurens’s style so I tend to discount that. This is a sweet book that is a bit outside her norm, and I really liked that.

Spoilers

The small mysteries are generally easily solved and the final one—the attempt to kill Silvia is suitably full of tension. The world that Kit and Silvia have built and the supporting cast of characters play into it nicely. Kit has earned the loyalty of several young boys who also look up to Silvia. It makes sense that they take Silvia’s safety seriously enough to go after her, to watch her.

I do wish that Kit’s background with his mother had been explored a bit more, but that wasn’t the story Laurens was trying to tell so I can let that go. Silvia and Kit seem a bit thin as characters, but that’s pretty normal for Stephanie Laurens, so I’m not going to shake my first at things I know won’t change. After sixty books, I know what I’m getting when I pick up her books.