Lady Emily’s Exotic Journey

Marek’s second Victorian Adventurers romance should be exciting, but slow pacing, exacerbated in the first half by the romantic leads’ fixations, results in a languorous Mesopotamian travelogue rather than a high-energy romantic escapade. Even an episode with pirates barely registers on the excitement scale. Lady Emily Tremaine, her friend Julia, and her mother—who helped enliven Lady Elinor’s Wicked Adventures—accompany her father on a trip to determine the efficacy of building a train along the Tigris. Their guides are Lucien Chambertin, a Frenchman with a secret, and David Oliphant, an Arab-English diplomat. David and Julia quickly fall in love, but Emily and Lucien require more time. After Lucien and Emily are physically thrown together during an attack on their boat, they become emotionally stuck, spending nearly 100 pages trying to comprehend their bodies’ reactions to the unexpected proximity. Though Victorian attitudes certainly constrained behavior, their constant intrusion into Emily and Lucien’s thoughts and feelings makes for dull reading in the present day. Agent: Gail Fortune, Talbot Fortune Agency. (Aug.)