Rating: 
Summary: Well below this author's standard
Review: I loved most of Laurens' Cynster books, they combined interesting characters and really good sexy scenes with well-written, intriguing plots. However, this book, along with her last three or four books, lacks the charm of Laurens' earlier works. The author has used passion as if it were some type of filler to stuff into all the empty space around the bland characters and limp plot. To my own amazement, instead of savoring the love scenes, I found myself skipping over them just to get on with the story before giving up on the book altogether.
Rating: 
Summary: I got to page 80 and couldn't read another word.
Review: I was so bored by Anthony, the murder plot, and most of all, Alicia. I couldn't have cared less who killed Ruskin and Alicia was about as interesting as a wet noodle. Anthony sounded sexy, but how he could be interested in someone as boring as Alicia I don't know. Maybe she perked up a bit after page 80, but I wasn't going to stick around to find out.Stephanie Laurens may have written too many books to come up with an original plot. This one is so overdone by S.L. that I simply couldn't force myself to read it anymore. Sorry to all the SL fans out there - this one is a dud.
Rating:
Summary: Waste of money
Review: I'm a huge Stephanie Laurens fan and have about every of her books in my collection. This book, by far, was the most boring and tedious of all. I did not find the story line in any way exciting. Same old same old. Complete waste of money. If you wanted a better read, try her Cynster series. Devil's Bride, Scandal's Bride, and A Rake's Vow...all have my recommendation. If you still persist in buying as I foolishly did, brace yourself for disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Tedious and a bore
Review: I've enjoyed many Stephanie Lauren books. Regrettably, this isn't one of them. There is a remarkably stupid mystery around which Ms. Lauren tries to craft a plot. The humdrum details of this mystery are regurgitated every chapter -- to take up space, it seems. The main characters could have been more exciting. Save your money or at least get the book from the library.
Rating: 
Summary: A good romance
Review: In 1816 Alicia Carrington pretends to be a widow escorting her younger sister Adriana Pevency during her first season. Alicia and Adriana know that the younger sibling needs a good match so that their three younger brothers can go to school. Anything less that a marriage to a kind wealthy man means disaster for the five Pevency orphans. Lord Ruskin has offered marriage to Alicia who rejects him. However, he knows she is a fake having flaunted the Ton with her widow fabrication. He uses blackmail to force her into his bed, but someone kills him before he succeeds. Lord Anthony Blake of the Bastion Club, men dedicated to finding their own wives without the aristocracy interfering, notices Alicia with the dead Rusken. He helps her flee the scene, but wonders if she is involved as he was investigating the deceased in an effort to uncover those traitors who abetted Napoleon during the war. As he stays close to Alicia, he wonders if his heart is hiding the truth about her because she hides something from him. The second Bastion Club tale is a typical Regency romance though the chase for the traitors occurs after the war is over. The story line entertains the audience, as Anthony knows his beloved has a deep secret she fears will be revealed, but he has a problem seeing her betraying her country. Though adhering to the conventional sub-genre tale and her own Cynster novels, Stephanie Lauren's latest novel will provide pleasure to her myriad of readers. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Awsome book!
Review: Ms. Laurens does an awsome job at keeping you reading this book. I couldn't put it down. I enjoyed every plot twist and change. The love scense are great. She keeps you guessing till the very end! I highly recommend this book.
Rating: 
Summary: uninspired and muzzled by the lovers' silence
Review: Occasionally, as in The Rake's Vow, Laurens doesn't disappoint, so I decided to give this romance a shot. It's mostly ho-hum, despite a promising beginning, because the romantic interchanges between Alicia and Tony are so sexually charged and yet so mute. This becomes quite hard to swallow after a while (once you've had sex, you should have something to say about it!).. Their silence also diminishes the sexual tension by a huge degree. That's because it's the sexy dialogue, especially that we read between the lines, that creates fine romantic tension. When they talk, it's always about business, essentially a boring paper trail, or she is thanking him, which is both tedious and offensive after a while. Her move into his house is not believable, either, and her belief that he (not she!) would suffer from this scandalous behavior is even less credible. I find Alicia's languid nature tepid and aggravating, though Tony does retain some male charisma. Incidentally, Laurens has to stop writing "girding his/her loins," an expression that makes me cringe. The writer from England has a point. Let's hope for better--she's got great sex scenes, if she lets her characters act like live beings and talk, and talk so we can hear what they are actually saying. Lover's French heard in narrative summary is no fun. If Tony's not going to speak French, which he speaks fluently, in the bedroom, make his nationality German or plain old English!
Rating:
Summary: Very boring and trite
Review: Same Laurens'stuff, different day. The series plot line involves 7 noble gentlemen who formed the Bastion Club to commiserate among themselves while they preserve themselves from the "horrors" of social matchmaking and free to choose their own wives. The gentlemen are all former government spies and have, by luck or their ancestors' misfortune of dying early, inherited titles, money and estates and their placement in the "ton". They still have their spying instincts intact having travelled in the service of their country for many years each. This master plot line is, to this reader, a far superior focus that has the potential to redeem these "Cynster" novels of which this book is the second in the series. One could also wish that the author would upgrade her descriptions of sexuality into refinement and some measure of elegance. There are some very captivating parts in the book, namely the machinations of the men reanimating their spy skills and going on a man hunt for a potential killer.
Unfortunately, the author shrugs off this part of her story while she waxes on in an adolescent fixation on sexuality for pages at a time. These extremely graphic intimate encounters between Alicia and Anthony are repetitive and silly. Yawn. The author would have us believe that a volatile, hotblooded French/Englishman like Anthony will settle for "pleasuring" her without intercourse over numerous trysts. His "excuse" is that she can learn to trust her body, herself and his motives toward her. He sounds like a polished pervert. Alicia is described as a smart woman but the story does not support that. Their so-called clandestine sexual encounters are ridiculous. The other major flaw in this book is that there are a lot of paper trails that go nowhere. There is no danger in the story where there should be. Even the capture of a paper cutout villain is glossed over when it should have been a definite highlight of the book. The heroine is wallowing in a self absorbed snit over Anthony's heel dragging in proposing to her while she is getting "broody", thinking of nesting and having babies. She lusts after his big, fancy mansions full of servants and creature comforts while wallowing in self pity that she cannot have what she wants. The author has made Alicia into a vapid, sappy dimwit enslaved by her hormones. Dull, dull, dull. There are 5 more bachelors in the Bastion Club, so that suggests 5 more books in this series. Unlike J.D.Robb/Nora Roberts who can successfully merge crime and romance without grossing out the reader, this author cannot.
Rating:
Summary: A very difficult book to rate.
Review: SL is the writing queen of regency historical romance. Her Cynster series was incredible. She seems to breathe the era without deviation. This book however is both good and disappointing. The plot has been noted in other reviews. It's a good story line and its always wonderful to see her "men" group together for a cause such as finding this treasonous killer. The problem with the book is SEX! The scenes are well written and every woman would kill for a lover like Tony who is more concerned for "her" pleasure than his own.(This could be a how to manual for men). But of this 440 pages, I bet 200 of them are graphic descriptions of foreplay. After a couple weeks of that he escalates the foreplay to "fulfilling" Alicia......and still goes home unsated himself.This takes fiction to fantasy. When they finally settle into a mutually fulfilling liason, the love scenes are very sensual. Frankly by then I didn't like Tony very much. He was this arrogant noble who seemed to think he knew what was best for everyone and he was very controlling in the bedroom areas. It's one of those books that I'll keep but probably won't read again. It was getting ho-hum by the middle.
And the ending didn't come soon enough for me.
Rating: 
Summary: Sizzling hot sex scenes. Lukewarm plot.
Review: Stephanie Laurens keeps concentrating more on the sex scenes than in the actual plot of her novels. I don't have anything against the sex scenes, actually, I think she writes some of the best ones in the genre, but they would be much better if they complemented a strong plot, instead of just being the plot. The intrigue was entertaining enough, nothing too deep, but I wasn't expecting that, after all this is a romance novel, not a mistery one, but the problem is that there is not any other plot in the novel. There is no conflict between the main characters, no emotional tension, no heart wrenching separation, no fear of loss, not even a small misunderstanding that would cause a rift between them. The only problem to work out was catching the killer of Ruskin. Other than that, there was only the sex scenes to keep the book going. I'm not saying that the book was bad. Stephanie Laurens is a great writer, and the book is amusing, but I know it could be better, I know this author could give much more. Her heroes are delightful, without exception, I just know that if she spent more time in the relationship between the hero and heroine, she could create a great novel. One thing I did like about this book, is the presence of characters we know from her other novels. I hope the Cynsters continue to appear throughout this series, and maybe even have a bigger role, like Jack Hendon had in this book. I'm thinking he is from the book "Captain Jack's Woman". I haven't read it yet, since other experiences I have had with Laurens' pre-Cynsters books are not good, but now I think I might go and read it. And there is Dalziel. This character gets more interesting by the minute. He really reminds me of the Marquess of Rothgar, from Jo Beverley's Malloren series. I would like to read his story soon, but I realize it may be some time before it is released, since probably all the Bastion Club members have to come first, and now Laurens is going back to the Cynster series with the story of Michael, Honoria's brother from "Devil's Bride". This I don't understand. Why writting the story of Michael while in the middle of another series? He is a likeable character, but not one that was screaming for his story. Anyway, if you are a big fan of Stephanie Laurens, and enjoyed the Cynsters books, you probably will like this one too. I will certainly continue to read her novels, as they are better that most of the stuff out there.
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