Series Review: The Adventurers Quartet

Stephanie Laurens is one of my favorite authors of historical romance. In the last year. I've read all four books in The Adventurers Quartets, to varying degrees of enjoyment. The books are all stand alone novels but because they are series that progresses with each book they should be read in order.

The Lady's Command is book 1 in the series, and by far the strongest in the series. You learn what the adventure is that you will follow through the next 3 books plus you get an introduction to the Frobisher Family.

The best part of this book was that Decland and Edwina were married. So there wasn't really a romance going on in this story, but rather an established couple that worked really well together to accomplish their goal.

A Buccaneer at Heart is book 2 and this is where you start to see the shortcomings in the series.

If you are a lover of romance you'll find that these books involve more adventure than romance and that adventure fills an awful lot of pages. The lack of romance sort of spoiled any love scenes too.

The two lead characters, Robert and Aileen didn't meet until the book was almost a third of the way through.

By the time you get to The Daredevil Snared, you really want rescue everyone that has been kidnapped.

This is Caleb and Katherine's story. We've heard about Katherine in past books. The past two books have a definite start and end point, but this one leaves you hanging because Caleb gets his crew kidnapped in this book and because we all know there is another book in this series, we know there are loose ends left for the last book.

There's attraction between Caleb and Katherine, but what is so very unsatisfying is that there just doesn't seem to be a reason for it and the love scenes, in the mine camp?
UGH!  I really wanted more out of this book and it just didn't deliver.

One of the problems with this series is the length of the books. Most are close to 400 pages or longer and when you aren't wrapping things up in a book, it makes things drag.

In Lord of the Privateers, you see Royd and Isobel who have a past together. She's headed to Africa in search of a family member, you guessed it, Katherine!

This book ties up loose ends, is much too long and just not what I hoped for to end things.

I actually went back and reread The Daredevil Snared after I finished Lord Of The Privateers, because I felt like there was something missing.

This book had all of the characters involved but I wished some of the hostages played a bigger part in this one.

Once the rescue was accomplished the book went on and on.

The series probably should have been 3 books and each shorter in length.

Rating: 3 flowers