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She hightails it from Ireland to England (or rather, takes a boat or so I presume) to find her long-lost twin. Granted, she has no idea where to look (except the horse races) nor does she have a clue about what the Something Bad might be. Intrepid, this heroine is. She latches onto the notion that Dillon Caxton, “protégé of Demon Cynster” (thus making the connection to the rest of the series of only slightly tenuous), who has risen above scandal to become the highly respected keeper of the books that guard the bloodlines of race horses might be helpful to her. Of course he is. False starts only happen in real life.

Dillon, naturally, is working a mystery of his own. Someone is fixing races and it's Dillon's job, hmm, he doesn't get paid, so it's his kind-of-job to figure who, how, and why. The appearance of a beautiful Irishwoman piques his curiosity. What, pray tell, could she possibly want from him?

Together, they try to solve their separate but naturally intertwined mysteries. There be cheating going on in the refined world of horse racing. Dillon will figure it out, mark my words. And it’s just his good luck that Priscilla’s mystery, being part of his mystery, allows him to do stuff like make googly eyes and seduce her while Trouble Is Afoot.

Pris, searching for her twin Rus (not Russ, Rus), is the kind of stupid headstrong that only romance novel heroes finds endearing. Without a plan, without any knowledge, she sets off on her adventure in Newmarket. Luckily for her, she is devastatingly beautiful. Also great on horseback. She adopts a false identity and goes about town, trying to find clues. Granted when she’s given everything she seeks, she has no notion what to do with the information.

If I may be indulged for a brief moment? Thank you. I have a huge problem with heroines like Pris. She simply has no idea how to solve her problem. She has someone who is obviously trustworthy and knowledgeable. Yet she continues to keep the secret of why she's in town from Dillon. Her continued silence is an irritant to him -- it's even more irritating for me. And her poor brother whose life is in danger? It's not doing him much good for his clueless sister to keep her pointless secret.

Of course, this gives Pris a chance to seduce Dillon and indulge her so-called wild nature. She is one of those women who will only marry for love – the man who wins her will see past her face and into her soul. Of course, given that this perfect male will know all about her with a single glance, there is no need for Laurens to give this character any unique or interesting qualities. She merely engages in reckless, often pointless, behavior to the point of ad nauseum.

Dillon, on the other hand, at least has a clue. Granted, he should have a clue, being as how he’s the keep of the books and all that. He is also one of those heroes who is living on the straight and narrow after near-destroying his reputation (I’m guessing this happened in a previous novel). He’s an upright citizen whose actions in this novel largely revolve around rescuing Pris and/or saving her from her own bad ideas.

Also, he’s too beautiful for this world. Every woman in the world lusts after his gorgeous face, body, etc. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He has as much depth as his female counterpart.

Pris and Dillon have no real chemistry on the page. They are two characters who were picked out of a hat to be the next staring couple in a Stephanie Laurens’ novel, and they go through the paces. Their mutual attraction is a given, their mutual seduction is by-the-numbers, and their clicking on all levels – couples like this simply do not have personality clashes, even when one half is TSTL – makes for long, dull narrative.

The two are perfect for each other because they are too beautiful for mere mortals. Only the truly gorgeous can comprehend the trials and tribulations that come from such physical grace. Give. Me. A. Break.

It would have made more sense if Dillon had loved Pris because she’s dumb as a doorknob. That would make her actions the result of mental infirmity rather than some sort of, uh, calculated plan. I simply cannot imagine a future for these two people – best I can do is imagine them staring at each other in wonder until old age arrives and they wonder why they’re still together.

Until that happens, they have plenty of time to spend scouring the countryside, seeking Rus, who has gone into hiding due to the Bad Thing. Someone is fixing the races, you see, and This Cannot Be Tolerated. So a lot of time is spent, you know, talking and plotting and investigating and moving forward in incremental steps as slowly as possible. It’s a bit like Laurens is being paid by the word.

They uncover the villains, foil the plot, and then enter into what can only be described as Act Two, or The Big Misunderstanding. Laurens must prolong the story and thus she gives us a botched proposal (thanks to Pris’s convenient amnesia about hiding her true identity) and a sojourn to London to enjoy the Little Season. There is lots of rather uninteresting stuff (see above re: lack of chemistry) happening in London and I still don’t get why Pris refused to marry Dillon the first place. I really dislike fake conflict.

But wait, there’s more! Despite the mystery being solved, a teeny, tiny component remains: who, pray tell, is the uber-villain? During all the ball attending and sex, others are seeking the answer to this very question. Everyone meets up in London again as clueless as ever. This allows a character who appears from out of nowhere to appear, wreak havoc, and die (the latter happens off the page). It's one of those resolutions that solves the problem quite nicely but makes absolutely no sense at all. I suppose Laurens simply found it was time to end this book. All is well in the world of Cynster.

This is a novel without tension. The conflict, such as it is, is either downplayed to the point of nothing or dragged out for so long that the whole reason for worry has been forgotten. Problems are solved easily, setbacks dispatched without a single worry. Hmm, not setbacks, wrong word. A setback implies that the characters take a step backward. No, as they’re executing their brilliant plan to thwart the evil-doers, everything falls into place like it was plotted that way.

While this provides a lovely contrast to the slow pace of the earlier chapters, it also makes for a dull read.

Laurens drags out the mystery, the uncovering of clues, the resolution far too long, considering that the core story is relatively straightforward. The only excuse for her lack of tight storytelling is to build a romance where one simply doesn’t exist. She hasn’t given us the right characters for extended romantic tension and she hasn’t given us the right plot for such a lengthy story resolution.

Too much of the plot is broken into chunks due to a curious need to stop for sex scenes or assignations or other uninteresting flirtations. The sheer inevitability of the coupling makes these scenes painful rather than intriguing. Laurens is not an author known for her rapid-fire pacing, but the languorous speed she employs here destroys any sense of urgency implied by the actual crime being committed. In fact, given that the story is set in the world of horse racing, you’d think she’s at least pay a little homage to the sport by, oh, putting us out of our misery sooner.

Laurens also has a habit of repeating information while leaving out other things. For example, she rehashes what the characters know about the plot to Destroy The King Of Sports over and over, yet glosses past Dillon’s unsavory past. She lets us wonder what witty dinner table conversation might be. She uses dialogue to tell the readers things, such as the importance of the Breeding Register. Naturally this results in dialogue that sounds more like a college lecture than discussion between friends.

What was really cool was how Dillon explained how the Breeding Register helped put an end to a particularly old-school sort of cheating – the substitution of look-alike horses at the last minute – to Barnaby, the only character in this novel with any sort of interesting anything (wasted, alas). Then later, another character explained the same scheme to Barnaby. Granted this happened many pages later, and perhaps that explains Barnaby’s utterly blank mind – it’s like he’d never heard the notion before.

Of course, this was the man serving as Dillon’s ace investigator in the field.

This book, like so many novels in series that have extended far too long, also suffered from the love disease. This curious affliction arises when characters from previous novels meet the newcomers in the current novel. Rather than allow for natural tension or, heck, wariness, the illness results in all established characters adoring, cherishing, and championing the newbies. At the pace the home crowd is growing, it will be near-impossible for the author to write a novel with any semblance of conflict at all.

Hmm, even the obvious potential was wasted. When Pris encounters a jealous would-be lover of Dillon’s (apparently he plays the field with bored matrons when in town), the other woman ends up helping our intrepid heroine.

I will confess that the book recently stood me well when I entered into a lunchtime conversation about harness racing. Me: It’s weird. Him: Oh yes. Me (returning to the original point): But I guess it’s important to track the bloodlines [going back like a thousand generations]. Him: Absolutely. Both of us: Glad to see our server as we’ve beaten this topic to death.

You can find Stephanie Laurens here. You can buy What Price Love? here or here.