The Grand Tour

Disappointment is the word that best describes my reaction to The Grand Tour: Or The Purloined Coronation Regalia, the second novel in Patricia Wrede and Carol Stevermers' second novel in their "Cecelia and Kate" book series. I absolutely fell in love with the way that these two authors wrote the first book in the series, each author writing as a character in letter form to the other. The novelty of this, and learning information as the character did was one of the things I just adored about the first novel. This was missing in the second novel. The main characters, Kate and Cecy were traveling together on their honeymoon, with their husbands, not with each other. We are talking Regency England here. This meant that the reader misses the back and forth communication.

The story itself was interesting, if a bit tedious. At one point one of the characters complains of the monotony of travel, and by that point I had to agree also. There is a whole lot of chasing possible nefarious characters to various ancient historical sites in Europe. And maybe a plot to reinstate Napoleon as emperor, or maybe not. I will say the ending was very exciting, and I enjoyed the pacing of the ending. It almost makes up for the slow pacing in the rest of the novel, almost.

The best thing I can say about this novel is the ending is exciting, and perked me up enough to look forward to the third novel.