Review of The Lady Risks All by Stephanie Laurens

Title/Author: The Lady Risks All by Stephanie Laurens

Publisher/Date published: Avon, September 25th 2012

How I got this book: received it from the publisher as an egalley

Goodreads summary: Neville Roscoe, notorious and enigmatic, lives resolutely outside society, bound only by his own code of honor - until challenged by his desire for the one woman he cannot have.

Miranda Clifford is a lady imprisoned by rigid respectability - until tempted by a passion beyond her power to deny.

Flung together in peril, through danger and intrigue, they discover a love impossible to ignore ... or keep

Guys, I'm a bit torn about this book. On one hand it seemed to take me FOREVER to finish this book and on the other hand it brought ALL THE EMOTIONS. I'm still trying to figure out which had the upper hand.

I liked that Miranda isn't overly worried about being 29 and not having snared a husband as of yet. I mean, her aunt obviously is, but Miranda doesn't spend her days wondering when someone will come and take her to the altar. She's much more busy taking care of her brother, who she's realising is managing pretty well on his own. Until he gets kidnapped.

Enter Neville Roscoe, who used to be Lord Julian Delbraith but has given up his respectability to save his family from ruin, and is now London's gambling king. They team up to save Miranda's brother and well, OF COURSE feeling start developing between them.

So far, so good. I was kinda rolling my eyes at the 'Delbraith curse' with all the men in the family turning to gambling. I mean, are you kidding me? That's just badly controlled impulses by bored men with a lot of money to squander, not a curse. But oh well, it plays nicely into all the intrigue.
Both Miranda and Roscoe are nice characters and I actually believed they got to know each other before calling it love. I felt the connection, so I was happy.

But. Here comes the but.

Events were unrolling and I could see it coming to and end, aside from the fact that I still had about 300 pages left to go.
Yeah...

Everything just happened SO SLOWLY. The plot crawled along at a snail's pace and NOTHING aside from Miranda and Roscoe going to bed with each other every night and them conversing with Roscoe's family happened for PAGES AND PAGES. And while I like to see a little doubt and uncertainty and heartbreak, the internal analysis of everything by both of them got a little like a broken record at some times.

And of course there were the big scenes in which there was HEARTBREAK and fighting and tension and ALL OF THOSE GOOD THINGS and I had TEARS in my eyes and couldn't answer the boyfriend coherently when he asked me a question. And for those moments I kept reading, but I felt like a rather big portion of it could have been skipped and it would have been a much smoother read for me.

So there were parts that I LOVED and parts that had me going 'yeah, yada-yada, when are we getting to the good stuff again?'.. But because it also had a lot of moments that made me connect to the story and the characters, I still enjoyed it.

My rating: 3 stars