Rules of an Engagement.

Author: Suzanne Enoch

Genre: Historical-Regency Romance.

Format: Paperback.

Book 3 of 3 in the Adventurers' Club.

Synopsis from Goodreads.com:

For proper young ladies, good behavior has always been the rule...

Captain Bradshaw Carroway loves the seafaring life - though he'd rather be battling brigands than his current assignment of ferrying a boatload of spoiled aristocrats. One passenger, however, has caught his eye: a bewitching young minx who definitely distracts him from the rules of shipboard decorum . . .

Some rules, of course, are meant to be broken.

Miss Zephyr Ponsley has traveled the world, but she's completely innocent in the ways of love. She's never learned to dance or flirt. But scientific observation has taught her that the laws of attraction have no rules, and that no adventure, on land or sea, is more dangerous - or delicious - than passion!

My Review:

I'm not quite sure how to describe this book in a decent light, because I didn't like it very much. I probably should have taken a break from this author, but seeing as how this had been a decent trilogy so far, I decided to go ahead and finish it instead of having one last lingering book from this on my TBR list.

While there were all kinds of things I didn't like about this book, I think I would rather try to talk about the things I did like. Such as the adventure in this book. While it was a bit long of an excursion, I had to keep in mind the time period and the character's goals. Two of those characters, one being the botanist father of the heroine, and the heroine herself: Zephyr Ponsley. I was delighted to follow these two around and see the enthusiasm they had for their explorations and findings. Well, at least Zephyr seemed happy at first, but once Captain Carroway entered her life, she began to see another possible path for them both to take. Even though it seemed they truly hated each other at first. (Another aspect I actually liked.)

But, back to the adventure I was talking about. I loved that they were visiting as many exotic islands as possible, I thought the author did an okay job of describing these places, enough of a starting point for the reader to imagine it themselves, which I didn't mind at all. I'm not much of a "sea-voyage" romance fan but this was an interesting reading experience. I think the author did a better job of describing life at sea than she did of the places they visited. Which made sense because a lot of the important parts of the story took place on the ship they were on. However, this hurt the story in one particular scene where they were being shifted about quite a lot by a bad storm. I liked that Zephyr and Shaw (Captain Carroway) were finally getting together, but it was well, annoying when the storm seemed to be ignored so easily while they were getting together, and then suddenly returning when their..meeting was over. As much as they were tossed about (before she goes to Shaw she falls and hits the side of her head due to the tossing of the storm) I'm not even sure how they managed what they did.

As for the characters themselves, I liked how Zephyr was innocent of the ways of the ton, but as a young woman she seemed a bit narrow minded and a bit naive for someone who had traveled the world as much as she already had in her life. I think Shaw deserves a lot of the credit towards the development of their relationship, even though it was Zephyr who really proposed they get married, she sure did make everything else hard enough. I just found her too guarded I suppose. I really liked Shaw, mainly because he was the most well developed of the characters. He was a decent leading man, fearless, a bit rough around the edges, and looking for the right path of his life, which he finds with Zephyr. I feel the author spent more time on him than anyone else, which I found rather irksome. There were actually a lot of characters in this book. I wasn't overwhelmed by trying to keep track of everyone, because it just felt like they were just there. I understand that as a reader I don't have to love or hate every single character, but there were just too many to wonder about and this is only a trilogy. (But I will talk about that aspect of this series in whole tomorrow with a special post.)

I really enjoyed the first two books, but this one just fell flat for me in a lot of ways. So instead of just continuing to rumble on about this book I will end this here by saying that even though I didn't enjoy this last book, I really liked the first two and I will definitely still be trying this authors other books.