Overall Response

In my review of The Lady Chosen, I said that A Gentleman’s Honor was my first Stephanie Laurens book, and that I had liked it enough to go to my local library and get a few more books. I think it was actually The Promise in a Kiss, the prequel to the Cynster series that convinced me to invest more heavily in her backlist.

With the passage of maybe fourteen years, do I still like this book enough? If I had read it today, would I see more books by this author? When I went to Goodreads to add a review, I saw that I had rated it as five stars. I’ve reduced that by two now.

I do still like this book. The strength of the mystery carries it past some of the issues I have with the romance. As always, reviewing and critiquing the leads in a Laurens book is fraught with issues. Anthony Blake is very nearly interchangeable with Tristan Wemyss from The Lady Chosen, though I think I like Tristan a bit more. Though both were reluctant to discuss emotions, Tristan did it more easily and more quickly. And I don’t know that Leonora would have put up with nearly as much nonsense as Alicia did. So in that case, I do think there’s enough of a difference.

The romance is…fine. I liked it at first because Tony doesn’t really ever balk about keeping Alicia in the loop or working with her which is always nice. But Tony does things and takes for granted that Alicia will follow his lead–that she understands where they’re going, and I don’t ever blame Alicia for not knowing the endgame. I do kind of hold her responsible for not speaking up sooner. I’ll go into detail in the spoiler section, but suffice to say — the romantic conflict after a certain point becomes artificial and once an issue can be solved if your leads just talk about it–then it’s really not a conflict.

The plot is good and it gives us the hint of the final traitor we’ll be chasing until the last book in the series. Dalziel shows up here more as a stronger lead, though I’m never sure how I feel about him until we get to his book. I like him thus far, and I’m interested in tracking how that goes and how his continual presence affects his book which is the conclusion of the series.

As always, Laurens uses the rest of the Bastion Club sparingly, and this is one of the reasons why I like her work. I’ve never noticed her putting in characters for the hell of it, even if they’re useful. Jack and Kit from Captain Jack’s Woman show up, and I notice they’re still pissing me off, but they play a good role and I understand why they’re there. That’s the mark of a good author. Laurens knows how to plot a series and connect it without making the reader kind of want to smack herself repeatedly. (See Mackenzies and McBrides).

This is a good entry into the series for the most part, though the romance is less satisfying than I like, the other elements carry it enough for me to like it.

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