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The Lady Risks All (2012)

by Stephanie Laurens(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0062068636 (ISBN13: 9780062068637)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Avon

review 1: Stephanie Laurens is always good at describing two stages of love affairs - the slow dance that is the beginning (glances, touches, glints in the eye), and the assured joy of a regular relationship (lots of her couples manage to sleep together as a matter of course, ignoring incidentals like gossip, pregnancy etc). This book is no exception. The plot is really irrelevant because it's all designed to get H & h together so that they can conduct a long affair before She persuades Him that they really ought to marry, and He then confesses he's in love with Her but hasn't liked to mention it so far.But she has become, I think, a lazy writer, with stock epithets for her characters standing in for detailed analysis - if Roscoe had been described just once more as "London's gamb... moreling king" I would have screamed. Miranda is always 29 and on the shelf. Laurens is lazy in other ways too - there's a very restricted range of emotions available to her characters (no angst, very few raised voices), which all leads to a formulaic read. It used to be a decent formula, but maybe I've just outgrown it a bit.
review 2: I really enjoyed this book! I felt like the heroine and hero really got to know each other and develop a believable bond. I also liked the adventure/mystery aspect of the plot. The sexy parts were steamy in a good way (though some of the analogies got a little repetitive). Most of all, I really liked that there wasn't any "if a man puts his dick in a woman her life is over" nonsense. There was no angst about the heroine "throwing her life away in sin" and the hero didn't feel the need to "make an honest woman out of her" just because they had sex. The sex itself was not treated as a sin or something dishonest or scandalous, which is rare in a Regency novel. (YES. MORE OF THIS PLEASE.)Pre-spoilers conclusion: This was the first Stephanie Laurens book I've read and I was highly satisfied. I intend to check out more of her books![Mild spoilers from here on]I thought the reason the hero felt like he couldn't marry the heroine was a little contrived and didn't make sense for someone who knew her so well by the end (when he was still determined not to marry her). [Big spoiler coming up]My only real complaint about this novel is the fact that Laurens introduced the villain practically at the very end of the book, and his story had a lot of gaps and plot holes in it. There was another character that would have made more sense and would have also shortened the book by a chapter or two. less

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