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    Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue
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    Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue
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    Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue
    Ebook522 pages7 hours

    Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue

    By Stephanie Laurens

    3.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    About this ebook

    All new format of the first book in NEW YORK TIMES bestselling author Stephanie Laurens's newest trilogy. The Cynster sisters are on a quest to find a hero who is their match in every way.
    Determined to hunt down her very own hero, one who will sweep her off her feet and into wedded bliss, and despairing of finding it in London's staid ballrooms, Heather Cynster steps out of her safe world and boldly attends a racy soiree. But her promising hunt is ruined by the supremely interfering Viscount Breckenridge, who whisks her out of scandal and straight into danger when a mysterious enemy seizes her, bundles her into a coach, and whisks her out of London. Now it's up to the notorious Breckenridge to prove himself the hero she's been searching for all along...
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers Australia
    Release dateSep 1, 2011
    ISBN9780730496687
    Unavailable
    Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue
    Author

    Stephanie Laurens

    #1 New York Times bestselling author Stephanie Laurens began writing as an escape from the dry world of professional science, a hobby that quickly became a career. Her novels set in Regency England have captivated readers around the globe, making her one of the romance world's most beloved and popular authors.

    Read more from Stephanie Laurens

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    Reviews for Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue

    3.5/5

    102 ratings10 reviews

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    • 3/5
      At this point I feel like Stephanie Laurens is just recycling her Cynster books. The kidnapping plot was new but not very believable. Heather frequently came close to the 'too stupid to care about' line. The second half of the book where there should have been some relationship development was just a bunch of angst and I felt like I had read it before (but it had a lot less depth than the other novels).The next book is already on the way from paperbackswap so I'll definitely read that but I think that may be the end of the Cynsters for me.
    • 3/5
      I did not enjoy Lauren's last Quartet, in fact i did not finish it, but I was excited to read more about the Cynsters. The only intriguing and exciting thing about this book was the prologue and the epilogue. That seemed like the really Stephanie Laurens, and the rest was written by a computer. I would love to read more about the Scottish Lord, his family and their connection to the Cynsters. I think someone is encouraging epic novels, but I think it is unnecessary to read all of that for a romance. Speaking of romance, I felt absolutely no connection between the hero and heroine. I do not know I keep going back to Devil's bride and the other male Cynsters, even though after a couple they were predictable they were fun, sexy, dangerous and readable.
    • 3/5
      Delightfully cracked out during the first half, but it all falls apart by the end.
    • 4/5
      Anytime the Cynster family is involved you know that love is being searched for and it's no different when it comes to the Cynster sisters. Heather has decided that since she's nearly on the shelf she has to take love into her own hands and starts out on her own but she is kidnapped by a mysterious Scotsman but Viscount Breckenridge comes to her rescue. Can she still find love or has it already found her?The Cynster family is one of my favorites so finding hat the sisters are just as love challenged as the brothers is great reading as far as I'm concerned.
    • 3/5
      This one would have been a definite four-star read...if about a hundred or so pages had been cut out. Perhaps even two hundred. (Or maybe if I hadn't read book two of the Cynster Brides before this one, as my main complaint is the same for both books and I was more aggravated by it the second time around because of the "been there, read that" factor.) The kidnapping and rescue bits were great--well done, suspenseful, action-packed. I was a bit suspicious, though, when that part of the book was over and I was still in the first half of the audiobook! What, I wondered, would the rest of the book be? After reading the second in the series, I should have realized--a long and drawn out we-have-to-marry-because-of-society/nope-I've-got-other-plans-you-overbearing-man-forget-it drama. It went on waaaaaay too long, especially once they each decided that yes, they really did love the other person. Heather's solution--I'll sleep with him (again) and let my actions "say" it for me and then he'll know--was just silly, especially when she was the one insisting (without actually letting him know what it was she was insisting on, of course) that he out and out say the words to her. The drama at the end was a refreshing change, but still didn't quite make up for what had gone before. I'll still hang on for book three, (or book eighteen in the whole Cynster series), and hope that Angelica has more sense than her older sisters. Hope springs eternal.
    • 3/5
      This is a Cynster novel. This is not her best. The characters were particularly shallow. And the story was ridiculously drawn out. It was like three stories in one. At any rate, it is a Cynster novel, so those who read them will want to read it regardless. It is also a start of a mini story line with Heather and her sisters being targetted by a kidnapper.
    • 3/5
      Despite a convoluted and not-very-believable kidnapping plot, this was an entertaining read.
    • 5/5
      Stephanie Laurens has been a long time favorite author of mine but I have to admit after the disaster of a series, The Black Cobra Quartet, I was a little leery of picking up another book from her. The fact that I have loved her Cynster books was the sole reason I chose to and believe me it was a good decision. This book renewed my love of Laurens writing and my love of the Cynster family. This family is not only made up of strong willed, over bearing men who also possess hearts of gold but the heroines are always strong, independent and above all smart women. Yes, they can be impetuous at times and a bit too stubborn but it meshes nicely with the type of woman who can stand up to a Cynster male when needed and not be overwhelmed by their strong presence. Heather is a perfect example of this. While she initially is panicked after being kidnapped as any normal person would be she figures out that while it could be dangerous she must try and gather as much information about her kidnapper as possible to avoid one of her sisters or cousins from facing the same situation. Her conclusion is well thought out and isn't made simply to be stubborn and difficult to spite Breckenridge. Breckenridge was also as close as you can get to the perfect male. He was strong, handsome, caring and while overbearing he did not let that over come common sense. He realized when Heather made valid points and acknowledged her point even when it went against all of his protective instincts. The kidnappers also added to the fun as they are not your run of the mill thugs. They are smart, remarkably kind considering the circumstances and one of them is even a hired maid to help provide comfort and respectability for Heather. It was fun watching Heather spar with the kidnappers as she tries to wrangle any clues from them. The man who hires them is a mystery. We catch glimpses of him through out the book and get bits and pieces behind his plan to kidnap Heather but Laurens keeps you guessing as to his true reasons. We are shown that for someone who arranges the kidnapping of an innocent woman he isn't as despicable as one would expect. Unfortunately it looks like we will have to wait for another book to learn more about him.This was another great book from Stephanie Laurens and made me glad I came back to the Cynster fold.
    • 4/5
      Usually I love the Cynster books and this started off with a great deal of promise. Heather Cynster is kidnapped by agents of a ‘laird’ sent after ‘one of the Cynster sisters’, any one will do, & she was in a position to be snatched due to Viscount Breckenridge removing her from a party she was attending, on the grounds it was too wild for her, and letting her walk alone to her carriage. He sees her being taken & follows after her. Not being the weak & helpless sort Heather sets herself to finding out why she was taken & learning from her captors what she can about their employer. The kidnappers are not your run of the mill rent a thugs, they are smart men & respect her intelligence & capabilities. They take her to Gretna Green to await the laird. Before he turns up she escapes with the help of Breckenridge. The laird pursues them to the Vale of Casphairn, where Richard & Catriona Cynster live, then accepting his quarry has eluded him, he returns to his highland home. And at this point the the promise sort of fails for me. Lacking any drama or mystery, we are left watching Breckenridge do his damnedest not to admit he loves Heather for far too many pages. He at least seems to have a valid reason for this behavior, unlike several other of Laurens' heroes, who also exhibit it. But still, get over yourself man & speak up! If your ego is that important to you she is probably better off without you. Not that she is necessarily proclaiming her undying love either but she is certainly more open about it. Endlessly repeating "We must marry because society says so" after she has basically said "Oh hell no, not for that reason" more than once, is not going to change her mind & is really irritating after a bit, not to mention made me start questioning his intellegence. I was beginning to think there would be no dramatic action to precipitate he & Heather’s finally admitting their feelings to one another, but at last there was. And good thing too because I was about done with them both, likeable as they both are. There is only so much 'no, a man like me can't admit love' nonsense I can take.Meanwhile I want to know more about this laird, he seems more complex & interesting than Breckenridge.He’s featured in the next book which comes out in October focusing on his pursuit of the next Cynster sister, Eliza.I did like that we got to see more of Richard & Catriona. He is my very favorite of all the Cynster males.
    • 1/5
      Why I Listened: That's a question I asked myself numerous times throughout the book. Seriously though, I reviewed it for the Speaking of Audiobooks column at AAR but my review (rant) is just too long for the column. So, with permission, I'm posting it here. Read on at your peril.What it's about: Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue is the first book in the Cynster Brides series by Australian author Stephanie Laurens. Heather Cynster, daughter of Martin and Celia, is abducted from a soiree in London. The abduction is witnessed by Viscount Breckenridge, a not-friend of hers. They don’t get along – he thinks she’s too young for him (there’s a 10 year age gap) and keeps his distance, she thinks he considers her a child. Breckenridge follows and tries to rescue her but Heather has discovered that the kidnappers wanted only a “Cynster daughter” not specifically Heather and given that she’s being treated well (they hired a maid for her, for “countenance”) she thinks it is best to stay in their clutches and extract information about the villain behind the scheme so as to protect her cousins and sisters. Breckenridge goes along with it and follows, keeping watch. If that sounds like a flimsy excuse for a plot to you, it would be because it is. Given the amount of time Heather spends with the kidnappers, she actually finds out precious little about them and even when she does, it is in brief conversations and DAYS are going by. She’s not frightened or in any way traumatised – it’s the most pathetic kidnapping in the history of the activity.What worked for me and what didn't: Torturous. Tedious. Tautologous. In audio, Ms. Laurens habit of describing everything at least three times is so very much more annoying than in print. In print, I skim and I probably only read one word in three, which means I can keep up with the gist of the story but do not want to hit something. I found the same does not apply to audio. I definitely wanted to hit something.If I had a dollar for every time Breckenridge was described (sometimes within the same paragraph as “the Foremost Rake of the Ton”, I’d be able to buy myself a Kindle. Possibly two. Breckenridge, or, as I like to call him FRT, is, to make matters worse, a very poor excuse for a rake. Depending on what part of the book you are listening to, he has either bedded “countless” ladies, or not as many as everyone thinks. However many ladies he has bedded, in his experience, most ladies don’t take any active part in the process (presumably they just lie there and think of England) and only a few have shown anything like passion. So, when FRT eventually beds the heretofore virginal Heather Cynster, he’s overwhelmed, stunned and amazed by her enthusiastic response – she’s active, takes the initiative, passionate. In one scene when she’s, er, “going downtown”, he reflects that he didn’t let ladies to that to him but she was different – WHAT? See? BAD rake. He should be booted out of the Society of Regency Rakes forthwith. Besides, anyone who knows anything about the Cynsters would know that if he was really that bad, Devil and his “ilk” wouldn’t let FRT within coo-ee of pure Heather.Then there’s Heather – at the beginning, she’s given up searching in the traditional ballrooms of the ton for her “hero. She’s decided (not unlike her cousin (?) Amanda from On a Wild Night) to search in the racier environs to find the man who will sweep her off her feet. Later, when offered marriage by FRT due to the damage to her reputation, she refuses and states that she had resigned herself to being a spinster and wants to look after homeless children so her reputation or lack of it doesn’t matter. Next thing, she’s contemplating how it turns out that FRT is her perfect hero if only he would love her. Hur?The villain is the worst villain in the history of villains. We don’t know his identity, but, after hiring people to abduct Heather, he includes a maid for countenance on the journey. Then, when she does escape with FRT, he follows, not to get her back – no!! He follows to make sure that the “bounder” who has her treats her well. There is very little in the book about the motivations of the villain other than that he’s only doing it because his mad-ass mother has made some sort of squirly bargain with him which forces him to “ruin the reputation of a Cynster daughter”. It is clear that he will be the bad guy in the series until he is eventually the hero of the final story in the trilogy.Anyway, Heather and FRT escape together but due to (some more ridiculous) circumstances, they are forced to continue on foot and this takes a number of days. They head for Richard and Catriona Cynster’s estate and on the way there the “romance” part of the book begins. There is literally NOT SO MUCH AS A KISS before chapter 9. Their very first “romantic encounter” is also the full monty. There follows 3 chapters of sexytimes, each described in torturous purple prose - three times. Once FRT and Heather arrive at the Vale there ensues further torture for the listener. FRT has vowed never to love (and thereby be vulnerable to another). Problem is, he’s already in love. Okay, so: New vow. He won’t tell her how he feels because that would give her too much power over him. Problem: she’s declared she won’t marry a man who doesn’t hold her in true “affection” which even he knows is code for “love”. So, he decides to show her his feelings by the power of his “mighty wang of lovin’”. Meanwhile, she’s decided she loves him but won’t marry him unless he loves her too and tells her so. She’s having no success in drawing out a declaration and so decides to show him her true feelings with her “magic hoo-ha”. *sexytimes*. Problem: afterwards she thinks he was just pretending in order to get her to agree to the wedding and says no anyway when he proposes yet again. It was enough to make me bang my head against a wall. Repeatedly. Over and over again. Many times. It takes an injury to FRT to sort matters out (I won’t give away what sort; it’s not quite “pecked to death by pigeons” (TM Julia Quinn) but, oh man - over-the-topsville it is).I decided to listen to this book because, while I do grind my teeth these days at the triptych descriptions and the overuse of the word “evoke” (in all of its many many iterations) , and all the “him being him”s and “her being her”s I have nevertheless really enjoyed some of Ms. Laurens books (Devil’s Bride, On a Wicked Dawn, The Ideal Bride, A Gentlemen’s Honor). But I’m not a big fan of Simon Prebble's narration of her books. He’s a bit too overwrought for my taste (I listened to two of the Black Cobra quartet which he narrated). This one has a new-to-me narrator and I thought it was worth trying. Sadly, Matthew Brenher is the opposite of overwrought. While he does use some expression in his voice, there’s no passion or excitement – the intonation during a scene where they’re sipping tea is the same as during the time they’re traversing “passion’s landscape” (yes, that is a direct quote.) I thought his voice for our hero FRT was quite good, but Richard “Scandal” Cynster has developed an alarming Scottish accent in the 9 years he’s been living there and Catriona, from the sound of her, has apparently taken up chain smoking – and sometimes she slipped into a more Yorkshire accent than a Scots one which was a bit disconcerting. A brief appearance by Michael Anstruther-Wetherby (one of my favourite Laurens heroes) and his wife Caro was even more troubling. Michael sounded prissy and rather like he’d been castrated. In fact at the end of each sentence he uttered, I mentally added “and where ARE my testicles anyway?”. Caro sounded like she was in her 50’s and frumpy . Heather’s voice was okay, but Mr. Brenher does suffer from that common problem with male narrators where the female characters sound like they’re men in drag. Also, I know that Ms. Laurens can write an extremely long and convoluted sentence, but I wondered whether Mr. Brenher had done any pre-reading before the narration performance. There were these pauses in odd and unexpected places which made the sentences sound like they had just abruptly stopped. It was so prevalent throughout the book, it was very off-putting. Because I was tortured by the silly plot and the overwrought descriptions, I had plenty of time to notice each occasion.What else? The book came in at more than 15 hours of listening time. Given that most of it was adjectives, it could easily have been trimmed by half and nothing would have been lost of the plot (what there was of it).I’ve decided I have to break up with Stephanie Laurens on audio. I just can’t bear it anymore. It may be that I will try some more in print where I can skim to my heart’s content and therefore save a layer of enamel on my teeth, but it won’t be soon.