A Gentleman's Honor

Rating:
Summary: Typical Laurens novel but with an excellent hero!
Review: Stephanie Laurens writes good stories with steamy love scenes that can go on for pages and heros to die for. Anthony (Tony) Blake is one of them. He is comparable to a Cynster hero, which if you are a fan of Laurens, you know what he is about. He is handsome, trustworthy, and very possesive of the heroine who is bound to become his mate in every sense.
Alicia is the heroine. She pretends to be a widow so her younger sister can have a season in the Ton and find a good husband. This facade almost becomes known when a so-called gentleman, who knows her secret, blackmails her into marrying him. But soon he is found dead and Tony gets involved in the case.
Some readers think Laurens has lost her strive up to this book because the scenarios and characters are becoming too much alike. Perhaps the same can be said for Alicia, but with Tony, Laurens has written a complex and seductive individual.
The mystery and suspense is so-so but the overall enjoyment of the book is watching Tony take control of the situation and of course the intimate scenes between him and Alicia. Sometimes there are way too many to count but most readers will enjoy them and need an ice cube when done reading.
If you are into a sensual story with a great hero, check this one out. Hopefully Laurens will keep writing better characters and move away from murder and mystery that she always sticks to.
By: Kate Garrabrant... [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Petty Raunchy for a Regency
Review: The sex is sizzling in this lovely second installment of the Bastian series. Although Alicia appears quite reckless in her decisions, Tony appears to be a man for whom any woman would bend the rules. There really isn't much else to say that hasn't already been covered in a review here. The book is a good one to curl up with on a cold winter night. Nicely done and fun to read.

Rating:
Summary: Second Bastion Book is Steamy Romantic Suspense
Review: Tony meets Alicia over a corpse, not the most auspicious beginning, but definitely a grabber for the reader.

Alicia is a poor but ingenious 24-year-old spinster, masquerading as a widow for propriety's sake. The family keeps up a pretense of genteel wealth while living on borrowed money for one London Season in order to launch Alicia's lovely younger sister. In addition to the two young women, there are three engaging younger brothers.

Tony, who has newly inherited the title of Viscount, is recently returned from Europe where he spied behind enemy lines, not the most well-accepted form of service for a gentleman at the time. He's a typical SL alpha male, and I don't mean that in a bad way!

Tony quickly decides Alicia is The One, and goes about to fix her affections. He plans to propose after he's cleared up the murder. Alicia is disinclined to resist Tony's seductions even though she's mistakenly sure Tony's intentions aren't honorable. While Tony hunts the murderer and seduces Alicia, Alicia's sister falls in love with a suitable young man, and the reader is treated to all these stories intertwining in a very satisfactory way.

The Bastion books are set just before the Cynster books. None of the Cynster men is yet married, which gives Tony a chance to glare territorially at Demon Cynster. (Devil got elbowed out of the way in the first Bastion book.) Old favorites like the Dowager Duchess of St. Ives and crotchety Lady Osbaldestone help drive the plot along when the story shifts to the ton. Tony made his bow in Captain Jack's Woman, and Jack returns the favor by making an important appearance here.

Altogether, a delicious foray into post-Waterloo era romantic suspense. Oh, and it's pretty dang sexy, too!

Rating:
Summary: Original this is not.
Review: Well mainly not, and yes as the others reviewers have pointed out the sex disconnects from the story and disconnects the reader. However I'll point out some men are silent about their emotions. As for what Zara from England said.....yes to some, however this is fiction, it is not wholely based on the realities of the time,for one thing marriage in the Ton were not usually for love, do you want near every romance novel you read to be about a man and woman who married each other because they were suitable? Besides Bronte wrote of a disperate relationship in Jane Eyre, Elizabeth in P&P is not considered by Darcy quite his social equal and there are numerous other examples in literature of unequal social standing between couples, as well as real life cases that took place at the time. I do think that Ms Laurens could have made the social issue more important, and the way she tied up the novel, where Alicia's never has to confront her lies' consequences was plain ridiculus. So a little more realism would be appriciated.....

Rating:
Summary: Wonderful new series
Review: Wonderful book. If you like a little mystery but a lot of romance this series is for you!

Rating:
Summary: Yes buy, but.....
Review: Yes buy (it's Stephanie Lauren's), but the hero and heroine are unusually dim in the last third of the book. I mean California clueless...I mean frustratingly dense...I mean "hanging chad" stupid...oh you get what I mean. But hey, it's Stephanie Lauren's....

Rating:
Summary: Not Laurens' best, but better than the first in series
Review: Yes, the book has ideas and events that require a leap of faith (such as her moving into his house), a suspension of disbelief, but--for me--this one was so much better than "The Lady Chosen" that I was quite happy with it. Laurens dropped the silly affectation of writing insipid fragments instead of crafting well-written sentences, making the entire book more readable and more comprehensible.

Although the device has been used before, I thought the one-step-at-a-time love scenes were well done, the exception being Laurens' tendency to put scenes in without regard to moving the plot--in this case, the romance--along. She often takes it too far or becomes too technical and the magic & romance are lost.

I liked both Alicia and Tony, and I liked his friend Geoffrey. I would like to have seen more of her brothers; they brough a lively dimention to the book and could have deepened her character, which might have made the character's detractors like her better.

If Laurens could get back to dealing with the heart, with deep emotion, and putting love scenes within that context and use them to advance the romantic plot, her books would be better. And the mystery was at times tedious and forced; too much talk, not enough action.

So, for me, it's better than the last 2 I read from Laurens, but hardly up to Devil's Bride (for instance).