The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh (Cynster Sisters Duo Book 2)

My rating: 4 stars.This book is well-written, because Stephanie Laurens is a talented writer, and I was pleased to find that it was every bit as good as many of the earlier Cynster books.Ryder and Mary were both likable, and I enjoyed that they were constantly trying to "manage" each other. Both of them had very strong personalities, with a tendency toward bossiness -- and they both needed someone who could stand up to them.I did think the whole thing with Ryder not wanting to admit he was falling love with Mary was kind of annoying -- what is it with men thinking that gives women too much power? It is a typical plot device in lots of romances, though, so I wasn't that surprised to find it here.I won't give spoilers, but I did think that Ryder was too quick to dismiss the possibility that the person responsible for all the attempts on his and Mary's life was who it was. I figured out pretty early on, and a person as smart as Ryder should have seen it, too.My rating system is below.1 star -- Hated it, or did not finish. I usually only give this rating if some of the content is truly objectionable to me, like if one of the main characters does something really awful, and gets away with it.2 stars -- Didn't like it. This rating usually means that I thought the writing wasn't very good, the editing was terrible, I didn't like the characters, or it had other major flaws.3 stars -- I liked it, but had some minor issues with it. This rating means that there were minor editing issues, the story needed more character development, it was just too unrealistic, or had some other fairly minor issue. The majority of books I read get this rating – I do not consider it a bad rating.4 stars -- I liked it a lot. This is a high rating for me, and I rarely give a higher one.5 stars -- I loved it, and will probably read it again. Very few books are good enough to get this rating from me. The ones that do are usually classics.

The Cynster series seems to be back on the upswing, and I couldn't be happier about it. I've been a big fan of the books for awhile but many of the recent additions have been a bit lackluster. I think part of that was due to the heroes and the complicated 'danger' portions of the book. As a Stephanie Laurens fan I always expect there to be both romance and danger, I know I'm not going to get one without the other, but for the most part I've enjoyed the danger portions. The Cynster Sister Trio was the most lackluster when it came to that and those heroes were the most uninspired to my way of thinking, the Cynster Sisters Duo seems to be getting things back where they should be.Ryder Cavanaugh is a high caliber Cynster hero. To be honest we haven't seen a man this decidedly appealingly dangerous since Martin - although perhaps the comparison immediately springs to mind because Ryder is so often described as a lion of the ton. I think he also might actually be the very first of the men to specifically go LOOKING for a bride rather than just falling into it once he's met his bride. He's a very proactive kind of romantic hero, he wants to choose his own bride without being influenced by the ton and so he starts looking before the grand dames and the matchmaking mothers would expect him to, ensuring that he will be allowed to choose for himself.Unfortunately the choice he settles on - Mary Cynster, the last unwed Cynster female of her generation - is more interested in his younger half-brother Rand. She doesn't want a pushy, autocratic, overly appealing husband, no matter how fast he makes her heart beat. It's rather fun watching him hunt her down, and by the time she declares that she will NOT be the only female Cynster of her generation to go to her wedding a virgin, I was absolutely feeling the same excitement that I had with early Cynster books.What drags the story on a little bit is the "danger" portion, but I personally found this "danger" to be MUCH more believable and therefore enjoyable than many of the other recent books. Not only that, but I enjoyed speculating and then doubting my speculations. There was a lively case of side characters in the form of Ryder's family and I'm hoping to see them in future books... there was also some introduction to the next generation of Cynsters. I'm not quite sure how I feel about all of them yet.All in all, I feel like Laurens is heading back to her roots and to the tension and excitement that made her earlier books so successful. Are we there quite yet? No, the story definitely drags in some places, although I have to admit that I still enjoyed the glimpse into Ryder and Mary settling into peaceful marital life, but overall I feel like the Cynster series is gaining traction again. New life is being breathed into it, and while we haven't quite gotten a full second wind yet, I think this is a book that Cynster fans will be happy to add to their collections and that we all hope the future books continue in the same upward trend back towards the feelings of excitement and heady romance that the Cynster name invokes.

Although part of the Cynsters series, this book is also the second of a subseries "the sisters duo". On the whole I liked it better than the first one "And then she fell". What makes a difference for me is not so much the romance, which unfolds as one would expect in a Laurens novel, but the mystery element. Although - to me anyway- the culprit was obvious from the start, the way the attacks occur was more captivating than what happens to Henrietta and James.I hope we have seen the last of the famous necklace for "the Lady" which I ever found very convincing. However, I can see there is plenty of scope for becoming interested in the Cavanaugh siblings and I see they also have their own series, so that is something to look forward to.I see Stephanie was not sure of the title for this book and for me, it's not so much "the taming of Lord Cavanaugh" as "The maturing of Mary Cynster". Through her relationship with Ryder, she leaves behind her annoying silly persona to become a feisty , well organised, resourceful wife. It is all very satisfying.

This book "The Taming of Ryder Cavanaugh" is a romantic thriller/mystery novel, and the second of a linked pair of stories in the author's "Cynster" series, the first being " And Then She Fell: Number 4 in series (Cynster Sisters) ." Both these books are set in 1837 (the year Queen Victoria came to the throne), and follow on from the previous "Cynster Sisters" trilogy set in 1829. This book could therefore be seen as the final volume of a quintet.Mary and Henrietta Cynster, the heroines of this book and of its' predecessor respectively, are the cousins of the three sisters, Heather, Eliza and Angelica Cynster, who were the heroines of the previous trilogy, which consisted of1) " Viscount Breckenridge To The Rescue " (Heather)2) " In Pursuit Of Eliza Cynster " and3) " The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (Cynster) " (Angelica)In the first of those books, "Viscount Breckenridge to the rescue," while visiting Scotland, Heather Cynster was given a special necklace which has some kind of pagan religious powers: it was supposed to help an unmarried lady who wears it to find her "hero" and true love. We were told in that book that this necklace would pass in turn from Heather Cynster to her sisters Eliza and Angelica, and then to their cousins Henrietta and Mary before returning to Scotland.At the start of "And Then She Fell" Henrietta Cynster was 29 and still unmarried, which would put you well and truly on the shelf in 19th century high society: her younger sister Mary Cynster had just turned twenty-two. Mary is well aware of the prophecy surrounding the necklace, and believes in it. At the start of that book Mary locates the necklace and persuades Henrietta to start wearing it.Henrietta has long since given up any romantic intentions but Mary definately has not, and wants her elder sister to get a move on. Mary interprets the prophesy as meaning that she cannot find her own hero until Henrietta does, and is determined to get Henrietta matched up so she can go after the man she wants herself.Needless to say this proves a complicated process but by the end of that book Henrietta has found her hero and between them they have solved a murder mystery. At Henrietta's engagement ball Mary is duly presented with the necklace, which she plans to use to see if it confirms her attraction to the man she has decided she wants.It is obvious from the name of the book who Mary is going to end up with, and it isn't really a spoiler, since it is equally clear from the publisher's blub on the back cover of the book, that the bridegroom who Mary thinks at first she wants is someone very different. But the necklace doesn't produce quite the effect Mary had expected.Mary knows herself to be a strong, independent and indeed dominant character, and in 19th century Britain in which a husband owned his wife and everything she had, she couldn't face the idea of marrying an equally dominant man for fear he might try to control her life. So she is determined to avoid any strong characters like, say, the Marquis of Raventhorne, Ryder Cavanaugh. She wants a husband who is a less domineering character and who she thinks she can manage - such as Ryder's half-brother, Lord Randolph Cavanaugh.Unfortunately for Mary's plans, when she pursues Randolph, she finds from the very first line of the book that his half-brother keeps getting in the way. Is Ryder looking out for his younger brother - or is it possible that Ryder, who has never previously shown any interest in marriage but doesn't usually pursue innocent maidens either, wants her as his bride himself?But marriage is not the only concern which either Ryder or Mary have to worry about. From early in the book there are attempts to murder one or both of them. Who is trying to kill Ryder, Mary or both, and why?As usual many of the heroes and heroines of previous Cynster and Bastion Club books become involved as Ryder and Mary try to figure out the answers ...I found this reasonably entertaining, not the author's best work but not her worst either. A few of the ideas in the story have been used perhaps in more novels than they should have been, although the plot showed at least some variation from the model which Stephanie Laurens has used for the majority of her recent novels.In several respects these stories are rather unrealistic, and in particular, the attitude to sex of characters in these novels bears far more resemblance to those common in the 21st century than to those which were expected by society in the year when Queen Victoria ascended to the throne.Well-brought up young ladies of the ton, in the early nineteenth century, did not generally behave like the heroines of this book and most of Stephanie Laurens' other recent novels. In particular they rarely abandoned their virginity before marriage as readily as these heroines do. Prior to this book, the only heroine in the entire Bar Cynster series who made it to the altar as a virgin was the one whose bridegroom had managed to get mixed up about which girl he was supposed to be marrying. I'm not going to give away whether Mary becomes the second, to avoid "spoiling" the story.Indeed, it is not possible to explain precisely why some of the attitudes in this book are seriously anachronistic without such a spoiler, but at one or two points I was on the verge of throwning the book to the ground and exclaiming something along the lines of "No girl in 1837 would ever say anything remotely like that!"This romance in the "Bar Cynster" series is numbered 20 in the table and family tree which appear at the front of the book, but if you count the prequel, ( The Promise in a Kiss (Bar Cynster) ) and the "Barnaby Adair" adventure "Where the Heart Leads" this is actually the twenty-second Cynster novel.The full Cynster series to date consists of1)  Devil's Bride (Bar Cynster)  (Devil and Honoria)2)  A Rake's Vow: Cynster Family Series, Book 2 (Cynster Novels)  (Vane and Patience)3) Scandal's Bride (Richard/Scandal and Catriona)4) A Rogue's proposal (Harry/Demon and Felicity)5) A Secret Love (Rupert/Gabriel and Alathea)6) All about Love (Alistair/Lucifer and Phyllida)7)  All About Passion (Bar Cynster)  (Lord Chillingworth gets Rachel for Leah)8) On a wild night (Amanda Cynster and Martin)9) On a wicked dawn (Amelia Cynster and Luc)10) The Perfect Lover (Simon Cynster and Porchia)11) The Ideal Bride (Martin and Caro)12) The Truth about love (Gerrard and Jacqueline)13) What price love? (Dillon and Priscilla)14) The Touch of Innocence (Charlie and Sarah)15) Temptation and Surrender (Jonas Tallent and Emily)16) Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue (of Heather Cynster)17) In pursuit of Eliza Cynster (Eliza)18) The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (Angelica)19) "And then she fell" (Henrietta)20) This book, "The taming of Ryder Cavanaugh" (Mary)As mentioned above there is also a prequel "The Promise in a Kiss" which tells the story of the romance between Devil Cynster's father and mother, and the Barbaby Adair story, "Where the heart leads" which tells the romance between Barnaby and Porchia Cynster's sister Penelope Ashford. And Then She Fell: Number 4 in series (Cynster Sisters)Viscount Breckenridge To The RescueIn Pursuit Of Eliza CynsterThe Capture of the Earl of Glencrae (Cynster)The Promise in a Kiss (Bar Cynster)Devil's Bride (Bar Cynster)A Rake's Vow: Cynster Family Series, Book 2 (Cynster Novels)All About Passion (Bar Cynster)

Ms Laurens knows her subject, her period and is a joy to read, I cannot add a great deal to that as I could and have said the same of her other books. I always find them full of memorable characters; after all if you have read or read her books who could forget the first Cynster novel "Devil's Bride", the man himself the Duke of St Ives and the lady brave enough to take him on, Honora (or Honoria, there are two ladies in the books, their names are virtually the same) I have read all the the Cynster family books and their various connections. Even her other series, like the Bastion Club and The Black Cobra, they connect at some point if only briefly. Yes, I would of course recommend her novels but at the end of the day it is a personal choice as with all Authors. If you enjoy a passionate historical romance; the Regency period in particular, with more than a dash of danger and intrigue, she is definately my top choice.

In this book the author has at last got her act together. The plot rattles along at a good pace.The last Cynster sister has received the lady's pendant , but being of a feisty and managing disposition, tries to disregard it and have things her own way. Then events catch up with her and she and her lover are confronted by a murderer. The plot has echoes of the first Cynster novel, Devil's Bride. Evidently Stephanie Laurens felt this similarity too, for in the last chapter we have an overview of the family's fortunes so far. Lady Osbaldestone, a very knowing and game old bird has appeared briefly in virtually every book she has written, and as it now 1837 she must be approaching her hundredth birthday!

I cannot believe how bad this Lauren novel is! I'm such a big fan h ave all the Cynster and bastion novels, even the last three starting with the Breckinridge novel were good but since then I have been so disappointed! Pointless drivel, too much description of an event that maybe took half an hour! No decent story line and no connection with either of the characters! Couldn't stand Mary! Came across like a spoilt brat totally full of herself with very little redeeming features. Don't think ill bother any more if she carries on in this vein. Sorry ms Lauren u have severely disappointed me!