Customer Reviews

A Wild Pursuit

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Lady Beatrix Lennox is not your average society miss. Caught in the arms of a rake during her first season, Bea found herself ruined and disavowed by her father. Other disgraced debutantes might have gone straight into hiding, but not Bea. Now a dame de compagnie to Arabella, Viscountess Withers -- herself the subject of gossip -- Bea has blossomed into a dazzling sophisticate well-versed in affairs of the heart. Accompanying Arabella to Wiltshire for a house party for her expectant niece, Esme Rawlings, Bea decides to amuse herself by teaching the very proper Helene, the Countess Godwin, how to seduce the very proper Stephen Fairfax-Lacy.

Weary of his duties in Parliament, Stephen Fairfax-Lacy accepts an invitation to attend a house party held at the country home of "Infamous Esme." He figures a house party filled with beautiful and notorious women will provide him with a new mistress to relieve his ennui. Before long, however, Stephen finds himself swimming in a sea of feminine intrigue and caught in a web between three women: engaged to Esme, designated lover to Helene, and utterly smitten with the ineligible Beatrix. What's a gentleman to do?

What if Jane Austen had the sense (and sensibility) of Sex and the City's gal pals? The result just might be something like Eloisa James' A WILD PURSUIT. Witty, amusing and heartwarming, Ms. James scandalous ladies are back and better than ever. While ongoing plots continue to unfold such as Esme's ongoing pregnancy (surely a record in the annals of romance fiction!) and Helene's ongoing feud with her estranged husband, the romance at the heart of A WILD PURSUIT belongs to Bea and Stephen. Bea hides her unhappiness behind skillfully applied maquillage and a seductive manner, but Stephen looks beyond the gloss and finds a soul mate. Their unorthodox path to true love runs the gamut from playful to poignant and will long remain in a reader's memory after the turn of the last page.

While each story in this series can stand alone, it is highly recommended that readers start with DUCHESS IN LOVE and FOOL FOR LOVE in order to be familiar with ongoing plots and recurring characters. And for those already caught up with these extraordinary women and their unforgettable men, your next book should be YOUR WICKED WAYS, Helene's and Rees' story. Don't miss this delightfully wicked and totally original series!

TheSchemer

Now this was fun! A country house party filled with scandalous, flirtatious women. Properly-bred ladies, ethical in their way, but misunderstood by society. "A Wild Pursuit" is a story saturated with lust and desire, yet the author sidesteps heavy intimacy. However, it is the lightweight jealousy Eloisa James employs that delivers the most appealing reading sensation - humor. This is a comedy of errors. A mixture of misunderstandings that create tantalizing subplots that keep the pages turning for the reader.

The only male guest invited to the house party is Stephen Fairfax-Lacey, the Earl of Spade. This puritanical gentleman is a respected Member of Parliament, and a duke's heir. To his utmost delight, Fairfax-Lacey finds himself hobnobbing with these scandalous women. The women have included him in this celebration because he is husband material. If the marriage plans don't work, Stephen might be the perfect man to be a lover. Unhappily, Lady Beatrix Lennox finds herself very interested in his love talents. Lady Beatrix is a social outrage. Caught in a compromising situation during her debut season, she truly remains on the edge of society. Initially, I found Beatrix and her rebel attitude too foolish and too extreme; however, I did warm up to this character by the time the book ended. But it is Fairfax-Lacey's preoccupation with this lustful little upstart that is sheer entertainment.

The second subplot is the enticing tale of Esme Rawlings and Sebastian, the Marquess Bonnington. This is the first romance book I have read where a late-stage pregnant woman engages exuberantly in lovemaking and relishes the activity. This passionate intimacy is a magnificent move by the author. Sebastian is a splendid man. He is a caring lover, he is concerned, he is soothing, and he frequently talks to the unborn baby. Sebastian loves Esme, but Esme is confused. She has decided to become respectable. Unfortunately, the Marquess laid the groundwork which resulted in her husband's death. To marry now would create a scandal of enormous proportions. To this reader, Esme's beliefs are nonsensical. But, I will grant Esme's irrationality to hormones running amuck in the late stages of pregnancy.

Finally, the subplot that aroused this reader's future buying attention. Helene Holland, the Countess Godwin is truly out of place among these impulsive party women. For Helene is a lady, a gentlewoman who is also lonely. She exists in a life separated from her heartless husband Rees Holland, the Earl of Goodwin. Far too young when they eloped, these two people sadly discovered they were incompatible. Rees accused Helene of being a frigid lover, and now he lives his life akin to an alley cat. This scoundrel flaunts his mistress, allows her to occupy Helene's bed chamber, in a house Helene once called home. Enough is enough. Helene eyes Stephen Fairfax-Lacey as the tool to end this vile marriage, she will commit adultery, and finally get a divorce.

Although the story began slowly, it grew, and soon I was hooked. This is the first book I have read from Eloisa James, and I enjoyed this effort very much. Undeniably, I will go on and read Rees and Helene's story in "Your Wicked Ways."

Grace Atkinson, Ontario - Canada.

I am a big fan of Eloisa James and this book did not disappoint me; I enjoyed this book from begining to end.I laughed so hard through parts of this book that my husband had to tell me to be quite! I would recommend that before you read this book that you read Duchess In Love and Fool For Love as all these books are connected, but if you have or just want to enjoy a good book this is it! I always love to see a story line that has more than one set of main characters that flow together really well in the story and this book has that. I loved Beatrix and the way that she handled most situations with her honest approach to people, and the way she had Stephan practical eating out of the plam of her hand. She is one of my favorite leading ladies in a book. The fact that she is honest about who she is and only plays a few games with Stephan is refreshing. Alot of times I get sick of romance novels because the plots feel all the same, and granted the endings are a given in most of them the story lines do not have to be. I think that Eloisa James is one of those authors who is very good at giving a great story line with characters that do not make story hard to enjoy.

I still think her 1st two novels were the best. This novel had too much of a Jane Austen style of writing with a bit of sex mixed in.

Eloisa James is a great writer. But I just couldn't get into the 3 storylines that were going on at once + all the other misc. dialogue between other characters.

I know this got 41/2 stars from RT magazine - but I found it a bit boring and didn't mind putting it down. At the end I started skimming through the book.

I didn't like Bea - I thought her character was annoying - she was so shallow (I know Eloisa was trying to give her a bit of depth - but I didn't see it). I didn't like the age difference of 20 year between her and Stephen. I doubt Bea will remain faithful when Stephen is 53 and she is only 33.

I was so looking forward to esme and Sebastian's story - but I really disliked Esme in this story (loved her in the last). I thought she was so damn annoying - and if I was Sebastian after the thousandth time she told him to leave and that she was sure the child was Miles I would have ran!!

Helene. Well I like Helene and I a am skeptically eager for her and Rees's story next month. I think it could be really great or another bummer.

Lady Esme Rawlings-known to the ton as Infamous Esme-has a scandalous past but she made a promise to her late husband that she will become respectable for their coming baby's sake. Lady Beatrix Lennox is the object of the ton's gossip due to her wild and scandalous ways. Her own father has termed her a vixen! Countess Helene Godwin is tired of her husband's faithless behaviour and with the encouragement of Beatrix decides to take a lover and publicly cuckold him.

Stephen Fairfax-Lacy, a member of Parliament, is tired of the business of looking for a wife. What he needs is a mistress, preferably a married, less experienced lady. He doesn't bargain on being attracted to the outgoing Lady Beatrix. Sebastian Bonnington, a wealthy marquess, is employed anonymously by Esme as a gardener. He is also secretly her lover and wants to marry her though she does not want to get married. Can he change her mind? Will Lord Godwin be goaded into divorcing Helene as she hopes?

***REVIEW:Not your typical romance where there is only one heroine and one hero. This book offers three equally interesting heroines and two likable heroes. Ms. James artfully illustrates with this book that not everyone in Victorian England was prim and proper. I'd definately read this book again and can't wait to read more of her books.

Reviewed by: Christy of Christy's Book Reviews

Her dad disowned his oldest daughter Beatrix Lennon when she was caught half-naked with a nude stud at a ball. The Ton winked at the male, but condemned Beatrix as a promiscuous woman. Her godmother Arabella takes Beatrix under her wings as a chip off the old block and the younger woman flourishes though as scandalous as ever.

At small party hosted by Arabella's friend Esme Rawlins, known for her scandals too, Beatrix meets Lord Stephen Fairfax, who has pushed for reform in Parliament for the past decade. Stephen is tired from his failures in politics, but wonders why the blatant Beatrix pushes a married woman at him. Though he wants to reject the licentious female and her shoving of Helen Godwin at him, he finds himself unable to stay away from Beatrix as the upright moralistic aristocrat and the wanton fallen woman find themselves falling in love.

This is not the Regency romance that your mom read, as the story line is more of a historical erotic tale that is fun to read due to the brassy, independent fiery women who openly embrace sex. The story line may turn off some fans due to the promiscuity of the female characters, but is well written and serves as a mechanism to display the gender hypocrisy of the age that still exists today. Not for everyone, James smashes barriers with her enlightened tale of love and sex among the early nineteenth century aristocracy.

Harriet Klausner

Why the back cover touts this as Beatrix and Stephen's story I do not know, since it seemed Esme and Sabastian were the main characters. Personally, I have a hard time with a 20 year age difference between hero and heroine and that put a damper on the whole thing right off the bat. Moreover, there was virtually no romantic interaction between the supposed main characters, though Stephen was surely hot for the immature behaving Bea. Did not like this story, but have enjoyed others from Eloisa James.

Like the title says DON'T even attempt to read the book if you havent read any of the previous books in the series. Unfortunately I began reading this book thinking that I would be meeting Lady Bea and Stephen for the first time. Wrong. THe book is only partially about them. The back plot summary is extremely misleading because the novel was divided in 3 ways:

1. Lady Bea and her love interest Stephen
2. Esme and her lover/gardener Sebastian (along with their son)
3. Helene and her wanting to have a lover to rid herself of her marriage to the Earl of something

It seems that Esme had been involved in previous novels by James so the whole fiasco with her pregnancy and Sebastian had begun at some other point in time (in this case a novel) and who knows about Lady Bea and Helene? Readers: did they appear in previous books? I would assume this is the case, but honestly I do not care. I was so frustrated by trying to figure out the plot lines to each character (and believe me there are many more aside from the aforementioned 3 times 2) that every time I became engrossed by one's story it was stopped abruptly and brought me back to someone else's story.

Esme's was pretty interesting she's pregnant, recently widowed, in love/lust with her lover Sebastian but she wont risk the scandal marrying him because she wants to win the approval of her mother in order to be a good one to her baby. The whole time she doesnt know whether the baby is Sebastian's or her deceased husband's but in the end we find out it's Sebastian's. However everything that occured to this point was probably found in all the other books of the series because the author kept having to flashback for us to understand why Esme was pregnant, why she feels unworthy of becoming a mother and so on and so forth.

Lady Bea's story was a-okay. Stephen was 20 years older than her so that kind of threw me off. It was a good story but the age difference definitely made me feel a little iffy about it. I think that for the book's plot to focus on Bea and Stephen is joke because the majority of the book is spent focusing on Esme. Bea's and Stephen's relationship is really a subplot in my opinion.

Finally we have Helene. I did not like this woman at all. She is weak, annoying and a complete wuss. She has no backbone and book ends with her leaving to stay at some other character's house for some time and I gather that this picks up in James' new book. Who cares! From what I learned of her in this book she has to make a 360 degree turn in order for her to be interesting. Her husband appears in the book as well for a couple of pages, there was no chemistry between them so who knows what will happen.

It's not a bad book I liked Esme, Sebastian, Lady Bea and Stephen but I didnt like the fact that I began reading something that had so much more history in previous books. I felt like I was a third wheel, this doesnt sound logical but I just didnt feel privy to many of the details. I imagine that I would have enjoyed this book and its stories a helluva lot more had I known it was part of a series.

This author was recommended to me by a friend as an example of how to write a good romance. I will give you all the same reply I gave her as to why it is such a mediocre book.

The manuscipt is littered with errors right from the first page. There is no excuse for this with a spell and grammar checkers on most computers these days.
The first chapter is nothing more than pages and pages of exposition and background information dressed up as dialogue, with no sign of the main characters expect as people to be gossiped about in the vaguest way. Hero-male of species, Heroine-scandalous woman-but then they ALL are in this book so why do they care? They don't. They flout convention, so there is nothing at stake.
When the hero and heroine meet, there is no heat, just a rather crude leering on the hero's part. Then he decides to seduce secondary character Helene to play it safe, because she is married. Complete hypocrisy is not a very worthy character trait in a hero.
We get reams of tedious info about Helene's failed marriage, husband, husband's mistress, her music, her husband's career. In fact, we get the entire past sexual histories of all of the characters within the first 30 pages or so. Not subtle at all. There is way too much internalization, especially for people who are not the main characters. The internal monologue is not delineated with italics, so we get long paragraphs that look hashed together.

Even worse, Stephen suddenly wakes up at the age of 43 and decides to be married, wonders where the last ten years have gone, and decides he needs sex? Ludicrous. The author can't write about men at all.

Why have such a panoply of characters and affairs? THREE! It only waters down the romance between h and h. We want heat and passion, not a costume drama which is about as memorable as one of Rees' White Elephant Operas. This is also an absurd way of the author setting herself up for the next book with Rees and Helene-we need to care about the characters enough to see them through, and while they are trying very hard to be witty and charming, I see nothing of interest in any of them.

Helene deciding an affair is a great idea after years of chastity is also absurd. Once again, these characters have nothing at stake, they just do as they will. They are financially independent, can do as they like. This was not the norm for the period at all and destroys any tension she might have created. Where is the heroine! Lady Bea is a mere cipher.

Stephen is one note-Reform. The Tories were not interested in reform, so if he is Castlereagh's trusted man this is ridiculous. The little research that has been done is literally on the pages-an historical novelist should never show her corsets! One should introduce the historical detail as seamlessly as possible. Everything lurches, with jarringly discordant and jerky notes like Helene's waltz. I won't even go into the whole age of the waltz debate which readers love to argue about, except to say that it is not some newfangled thing as they all make it out to be. Stephen as someone with little social life and experience of dancing is absurd for this time, period, especially given his single state and title.

There is little setting woven into the book at all. I get the dressing room and the Rose Salon, the goat pasture, but no specifics, furniture, size of room, curtains upholstery, even a fireplace would be nice. Their dialogue is jarringly modern in places.

I hardly even get any details about what any of them are wearing, usually a bit interesting. The setting is NOT integrated into the book in any meaningful way. The action, such as it is, could literally be taking place anywhere.

This pseudo-comedy of manners could take place at any time because the characters don't give a fig about mores and they have no basis in society, they just live in their own little world apart from Stephen and his misplaced Radical sensibilities if he is a Tory.

The romance part of it: well, what can I say. When they finally do 'it' there is so much mention of the goat I thought I was going to get a bestial menage a trois. There was no heat or heart to the encounters between them, and there was no sequel to the scenes-they have sex, and then we get another domestic drama chapter. He creeps into the room, douses her with water, and it just drones on to a very unexciting chapter end, with no follow up there either. I would have liked to see warmth, commitment, their affair advancing, their plans for the future. Them actually speaking to each other about something other than sex. They are like wind up toys jerking to their conclusion.

Instead of a real conversation, we get Bea proposing via Romeo and Juliet and the second 'heroine' via the Song of Solomon. Very unoriginal, it has all been done before, far better elsewhere, and the characters have so little to say for themselves they can't even use their own words to woo each other? Or the supposedly brazen hussy is suddenly coyly shy? We expect growth and development from really good characters, and consistency as well. They are consistently dull but not much else.

The two epilogues are ridiculous as well. These people are not firmly fixed in their society or they would never so blithely court scandal. None of them ever learn their lessons, they are just wilful, capricious and obey the dictates of their loins. I dread to think what will happen to Stephen and Bea when he starts to go impotent.
At best this is a mildly diverting book one can waste a few hours at the beach with, but in terms of capturing the Regency period, it is average to poor, and in terms of romance, it is poor.
The first thing you can teach ever author who comes to you for editing advice is, "A romance is the hero and heroine falling in love, and working toward a happily ever after ending." I wish writers would remember that.

I loved this book but I must admit that I would have found it confusing if I had read it before the other books in the series. I adore the story of Esme and Sebastion, and love the way that Stephen gives Bea back a sense of worth. Totally recommend this series but strongly suggest you read the books in order.