The Brazen Bride (Black Cobra Series #3) Book

I'm not the sort of romance reader who claims to skim love scenes. I like love scenes. I anticipate them. But I also like for there to be a build-up to them. I like to savor the sexual tension between the hero and heroine. This book skips all that and heads straight into the bedroom. Chapter one on (or at least as far as I read, which was halfway through) contains a love scene.

Scratch that. This is sex, pure and simple, because the hero and heroine don't even know each other before they jump into the sack. Quite frankly, it got tedious.

Add to that the heroine is basically the ruler of all she surveys. Her word is law in her domain on the island of Guernsey. She even compares herself to Queen Elizabeth, only on a smaller scale. That much is fine. I could live with that.

But when it turns out she's also captain of her own ship -- in 1825 -- and the sailors all obey her without question, not even stopping to think about that old sea superstition that a female on board is a sign of bad luck. That development completely ruined my suspension of disbelief.

With a plot that is slow to develop (although it certainly promised a lot of action based on the prologue), and the old trope of the villians must be uber bad because they're gay, the numerous sex scenes and Captain Mary Sue, I was done.

And it's too bad, because I've enjoyed Stephanie Laurens in the past. I haven't read all of her Cynster novels because, after a while, they all blend into one another. I'd heard buzz that this new series was meant as a departure from the old one. It's true, this is a departure. Unfortunately that departure has taken a direction that is not to my taste.