Title: Passion Favors the Bold Series: Royal Rewards #2
Author: Theresa Romain
Published: February 28, 2017
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 368
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:Georgette Frost’s time is almost up. On her twenty-first birthday, the protections outlined in her late parents’ will are set to expire. With prospects for employment or marriage unfavorable at best, she decides to leave London and join her brother, Benedict, on a treasure hunt for gold sovereigns stolen from the Royal Mint.
Lord Hugo Starling has always felt protective of his friend Benedict’s sister, Georgette. So when he discovers her dressed in ragged boy’s clothes, about to board a coach for parts unknown, he feels duty bound to join her search. But mystery piles upon mystery as they cross England together, not least of which is the confounded attraction between them. As Georgette leads him to a reward he never expected, Hugo realizes he’s embarked upon the adventure of a lifetime…
Interestingly, while the first book in this trilogy hit on some of my favorite historical tropes, Passion Favors the Bold did the exact opposite—it’s a romance full of some of my least favorite cliches, and the end result was pretty disappointing. “Passionate” this story was not. But if you’re into a slow-burn roadtrip romance featuring a treasure hunt and characters in a fake relationship, this might be the book for you.
Much of the plot of this book occurs concurrently with Fortune Favors the Wicked, as both stories are centered around the same theft from the Royal Mint. In this story, young Georgette Frost gets caught trying to sneak out of London by Lord Hugo, and he appoints himself as her protector until he can deliver her safely to her brother. Along the way, Georgette convinces Hugo to take a detour north in order to pursue some missing monies, for which a huge reward is being offered. They pose as husband and wife, and there’s some mystery, and also they fall in love (big question mark on this, though).
It’s an okay-enough story, but it really doesn’t work for me. As I said, these are not my favorite tropes under any circumstance, so I was pretty “meh” about it as soon as I saw in what direction the plot was headed. Being honest, I possibly should have set this aside, but I was willing to be surprised by Theresa Romain’s (hopefully) wonderful writing and creativity.
Alas, that was not meant to be.
For one thing: this is not a romantic, passionate, or sexy book. At all. I said this was a slow-burn type situation, and that’s true enough. But I think Passion Favors the Bold might be so slow a burn that it actually snuffs out before anything good happens. There were no declarations of love, barely any sexy scenes (note: sex scenes aren’t necessary to sell characters’ chemistry, but they help). Overall, this just felt like a story about a stuffy academic who got stuck babysitting his friend’s silly younger sister and couldn’t wait to go back to his peaceful life when all was said and done. At no point in this book did I ever feel like there was any genuine tenderness or romantic attraction between the two of them—beyond maybe a mild infatuation developed mainly due to proximity.
And of course, the poor relationship development was partially caused by poor character development. I think Romain managed to sketch in what kind of people Georgette and Hugo were, but only in such broad strokes that their true personalities felt difficult to pin down. I never really felt like I knew who these protagonists were; rather, I knew what the author was trying to achieve. Unfortunately, she didn’t achieve it.
On top of the developing romance and the characterization, there is of course the treasure hunt plotline. And that…was not satisfying either. It felt tacked on top of a book that was already messy and/or underdeveloped. I do enjoy historical mysteries, and that aspect of Passion Favors the Bold was absolutely not up to par. It’s also worth noting that this book does not stand well on its own at all—you almost have to read the prior book to make any sense of certain plot points. That’s kind of a bummer, since I think this was meant to be an adequate standalone.
So, overall, this book just wasn’t my thing. It was certainly underwhelming, and I think it was that way because it was massively underdeveloped in a variety of respects. I have enough faith in Theresa Romain’s talent to write this off as a bad book from a good author, but in any case, it still wasn’t a book for me.
