Many romance novels ask the reader to suspend reality in order to enjoy the story. It can be anything from time travel to vampires, most romance novels ask you to pretend something that could never happen, can. If the story is good, that’s easy to do. Unfortunately, Recklessly Yours falls just a little short of being good enough to suspend the disbelief.

Holly Sutherland is one of four sisters who have been given a task by Queen Victoria. The four sisters are Her Majesty’s Secret Servants and the four women seem to act as spies and investigators for the queen when she has special assignments. Although I have not read any of the other books in the series, it seems that with each assignment, one sister’s special talents are exploited and she meets the love of her life in the course of completing the task. It is now Holly’s turn and as the horsewoman of the bunch, it is her job to find the queen’s missing colt.

The horse thief is Colin Ashworth. His cruel father has given the colt to the queen even though the colt is a part of an ancient Celtic curse that says that if any of horses that were a part of a specific breed are ever taken from the family estate, all manner of bad things will happen until the animal is returned home. Though Colin is a scientific man who doesn’t believe in curses or Celtic magic, the problem is that the villagers around the estate believe in the curse and unless Colin can get the colt back home, the villagers could rebel and destroy the estate. Regardless of what Colin believes, he must get the colt home in order to avert disaster.

When Holly arrives at Ascot to begin her investigation, she is loathe to suspect Colin. He is the best friend of her sister’s husband and he is the one man to whom she is undeniably attracted. She doesn’t want to suspect him, but as more and more suspicious events occur, she is left with little choice. When Colin finally makes his move to return the colt to his estate, Holly follows. She is sure that he has betrayed her, her queen, and his family. But that is only because she doesn’t understand the magic or the importance of the colt. Upon arriving at the family estate, Holly begins to understand the colt, the magic, and the power of Celtic magic.

Holly and Colin have a very engaging love story. I like the fact that the two have apparently known each other for a while and their love has grown from a strong base. Even though I hadn’t read about the first part of their romance which apparently took place in a previous book, it was clear what had gone on before and it brought a very nice element to the story. These are not two star struck people who fall instantly in love and into bed. Theirs is a relationship that has grown from attraction to affection to love in a very meaningful way and in that sense, I really enjoyed the book.

However, the problem I had was with the basic premise. How many women in early Victorian England would be a secret service spy for the queen? How is it that each sister is only used for a single assignment in which she falls in love? Especially since Queen Victoria is not portrayed as a matchmaker here. In fact she is portrayed in the end as a bit of a ninny. The way that the story was so contrived and set up, as well as the basic premise that any woman in Victorian England would ever be put in such a position, was the reality that the author asked me to believe in and I am afraid that, despite liking the love story, I just wasn’t buying what she was selling.

Another downfall of the book was that the author was really quite intent on letting us know everything there was to know about horse racing in England in the Victorian era. It became quite tedious in parts of the book as we learned about the practices of the English breeders and the politics of the Ascot racing community. I think that much of that brought down the potentially good pace of the book. Although parts of it were interesting, I don’t think that I needed to be inundated with all of it.

The next couple in the series are clearly set up to be Colin’s younger brother Bryce and Holly’s younger sister Willow. In fact, at times, I was more interested in that couple who seem to have a very innocent and convincing love story in the works. I think that I would enjoy that story very much if it was done without the secret servant premise. But, since the title of the series is Her Majesty’s Secret Servants, I think that I am out of luck on that one. And, that being the case, I think I will take a pass since that is the part of the story that I was not invested in enough to believe in.