Reviewer: Lori Graham
Title: Unladylike Pursuits
Author: Alyssa Goodnight
Publisher: Impress Ink
ISBN: 0-9759190-0-8
Release Date: December 2004
Genre/Sub-genre: Historical Romance
Year/Setting: 1818
Overall rating: 4.5
Sexual content rating: Subtle
Language (profanity) rating: None
Voilent content rating: Just a few hits on the head : - )
Alyssa's Website:
www.alyssagoodnight.com
Emily Sinclair is thrilled. She has just celebrated the birthday, which officially takes her into spinsterhood. She is now free to live her life as she chooses and think for herself. No more worrying about what her father and stepmother think. No more watching herself in public. No more riding sidesaddle. What could be more liberating?
Nice thoughts but Emily couldn’t have been more wrong. Her well-meaning stepmother has convinced her father that her birthday celebration has now guaranteed that she must be married immediately. Beatrice even goes the extra step to provide the prospective groom. A relation to Beatrice, Mr. Desmond Richly has been persuaded to accept this marriage even though Emily is far past her prime.
To Emily this couldn’t be more awful. Desmond Richly makes her skin crawl and fills her dreams (and I don’t mean in a good way). Emily is not about to be thwarted at this point so she negotiates with her father. If she can find a worthy groom in one month, she can marry this new man and not Desmond. Her father agrees and the quest begins.
On her way to her best friend’s home, Emily quite literally runs into Lord Brandon Davenport, both of whom are on horseback. Neither one knows the other but neither one can get the other out of their minds after this chance meeting. Their competitive edges have given them a way around this, however, by them parting while agreeing to meet and race in the near future. Emily is sure Brandon might be one of the highwaymen who have been plaguing the area while Brandon sees Emily as just a local. While Emily is looking for the titled gentleman to please her father so she can avoid marrying Desmond, Brandon is looking to never marry anyone at all.
I think they are both a little surprised how fate and their own subconscious keep bringing them together.
I enjoyed the tension Alyssa creates in Unladylike Pursuits. So often when I read historical romances, I find the female characters a bit weak. Not so with this story. Emily is a woman who knows what she wants and goes after it. Now there are some obvious constraints that we modern women can’t really relate to in her father basically deciding her future. But even with that decision she made some compromises.
The tensions come on several levels. There are new threads being introduced between Emily and her best friend. There is tension between Brandon and Emily as each fights their own feelings for the other. There is tension with the threat of the highwaymen who are wandering the community and when will they strike next. There are tensions with the entire marriage belief between Emily and her parents – most especially her stepmother. Then there is the tension with Desmond who doesn’t see the marriage thing now going in his favor.
I enjoyed how Alyssa wove all of these tensions into an intriguing tapestry of human emotions and dramas.
Lori
Question or comment regarding the review or the book? Click here and let Lori know.
Top
Reviews
Featured Reviews
Archived Reviews