A Daring Pursuit by Kate BatemanMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
She could see no end in sight.
Lady Carys Davies is being blackmailed by the man she thought she was going to marry and had one youthful indiscretion with. Unless he gets his payments of fifty pounds, Christopher Howe threatens to ruin Carys reputation. With three loving and protective older brothers, Carys doesn't want them getting hotheaded and challenging Howe to a duel, so she keeps paying the blackmail. When childhood and family nemesis Tristan Montgomery at first misunderstands why Carys is in Howe's carriage, he thinks she's carrying on affair with Howe, he offers to show her a better time in the bedroom. When truths are revealed, Carys and Tristan begin to better understand those childhood nemesis feelings were really masking something else.
This was the Carys Davies who appeared in public: carefree and delightful, a girl who cared for nobody’s opinion but her own. No one could guess that on the inside she was besieged by panic and uncertainty. Not even her brothers. Especially not them.
Second in the Ruthless Rivals series, A Daring Pursuit focuses on Carys and Tristan, siblings of the couple in the first book (A Reckless Match). The first introduced readers to the Davis and Montgomery feud, started, possibly, over a pig and more pranks and teasing in the current generation. You could pick up here as the family feud isn't really discussed and siblings don't make too much of an appearance. In fact, I missed the siblings having more of a presence, along with Tristan's aunts who when they do appear in the very latter half enlivened the story, and disappointingly, we never get to see Tristan with his dad. Carys has a friend Frances that is the beginning but she faded off and while having the focus all on Carys and Tristan was nice, I'm not sure they were a strong enough couple to shoulder the whole story. A stronger presence of the fun secondary characters we got to know some in the first would have bolstered this world and in turn the story.
“You smile at other men, but with Tristan you glow. It’s like you come alive in his presence. You’re the fire to his ice.”
This was a pretty low angst story, Carys is being blackmailed but there isn't really a sense of danger from it and the focus is more on Carys and Tristan sexually warming up to each other. Carys is described as being the outgoing one, she wears daring outfits but mostly to bolster her confidence and keep men at bay, she fully understands the consequences of her not being a virgin. Tristan is described as being more self-contained and proper, Carys always wants to muss him up and he is drawn to her vitality. I didn't get as much a sense of enemies-to-lovers here as I did with the first, it seemed as if these two were more teasing friends when they were young and with adulthood came the feelings of attraction. I felt like I missed their emotional growing attraction as this focused on Tristan giving Carys a better bedroom experience; he gives her a couple chapters one, in fact.
“Well, then. Why can’t we be enemies with . . . benefits?”
By 35% Tristan knows the truth about Carys blackmail situation and they come to their agreement that Tristan show Carys what true seduction is. The setting moves from London to Carys family home in Wales and I thought the story slowed some as I was missing that emotional growing as the physical was more of the focus. Emotional can grow from physical but here I thought both characters had already developed their love and were only denying it to themselves. That was probably the biggest aspect that didn't work for me and what slowed the story, I didn't understand or believe in the denying. Tristan is looking to get married, why would he have such a mental block in thinking about Carys? Their family feud is, for all intents and purposes, over with their siblings marriage. It just didn't ring true and felt pretty weak.
She kindled a fire inside him, and he wasn’t sure it would ever burn out.
Howe ends up at the houseparty and we get a treasonous plot around the 80% mark that felt a little out of place but does work to give a wrapped up ending. I liked the beginning, thought the beginning second half slowed, and felt the ending was a little haphazard. I missed some secondary relationships, more of a seeing Carys and Tristan developing their feelings of love instead of feeling they were already there and the story was weak in just having them denying them, and an ending that was, somewhat, slipshod. Tristan's aunts do make a great appearance that gave the story some life in the latter second half and I did love, what I'm calling, Chekhov's Ravens. Bateman is an author that consistently adds little details and tidbits that bring interesting and amusing charm to the story for me. The emotional relationship wasn't completely fulfilling for me in this one but I adore these two families and am definitely ready to see a possible Morgan (Carys brother) and Harriet (Montgomery cousin) romance.
“[...] Let me be your favorite enemy.”
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