When you’re reading a C book or below, you know it. The Elusive Bride, second in Stephanie Laurens' Black Cobra Quartet, isn’t one of them. However, there’s no getting around the fact that it failed almost completely to engage this reader.
So, what’s the problem? Let’s start with the positive. Stephanie Laurens isn’t telling the exact same story she’s told in book after book. After book after book. Still, even if I got tired of those characters oh-so-many books ago, I do like…well, characters in a book. I didn’t get them here.
So, what did I get? A detailed – and I do mean really detailed – tale of our protagonists being chased across India, Egypt, France, and England by a group of deadly cultists. Specifically, the Black Cobra Cult, one of those dastardly evil ones bent on murder and criminal mischief.
Englishwoman Emily Ensworth is drawn into the melee when she travels across India with a friend of the patented Laurens quartet of heroes who is murdered by the cultists for a letter he’s carrying. He gives the letter to Emily with instructions to deliver it to the patented Laurens quartet of heroes. She does and is immediately struck by Major Gareth Hamilton.
Following some minor stalking incidents – she stalks him in a departure from the author’s usual pattern – and the two find themselves fleeing murderous cultists while making their circuitous way back to England.
To be honest, this felt more like an action-adventure story than a romance. The bulk of the story seems to be made up of battles with cultists, running from cultists, yadda, yadda, yadda. In fact, the world “cultist” appears multiple times on almost every single page.
With all that cultic derring-do, the characters get short shrift. Emily is particularly unmemorable and at this moment I can’t think of a single thing to say about her other than the fact that she is a stereotypical forthright Laurens heroine who, less stereotypically for the author, is determined to land her man. Gareth fares even more badly since he is a prototypical Laurens cliché. Strong, protective, manly, good, strong…and in deep with the Cynsters, who do, indeed, make an appearance.
Readers who like more action in their stories than I typically do may well like this one more than I did. I was looking for a romance I could feel and believe in - not unreasonable when a book is published as Historical Romance. It remained elusive. Still, the prose is more than competent and the author certainly tells a story here. It wasn't one I was much interested in, but I can easily see that others may not agree.
Sensuality: Hot
Publication Date: 02/2010
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