Christina Kingston is an author who shows promise, but this particular book doesn’t quite deliver the goods. It had a lot going for it – and interesting plot, likable characters, and even a lovely title. But sometimes the devil is in the details, and that’s where this one bogs down.

Lady Katherine often feels like she has the weight of the world on her shoulders. She’s a young widow who managed her late husband’s estate. When she returns to her childhood home after his death, she finds that her brother Josh is mismanaging the property there, so she takes on that chore. Then her brother Hal is accused of masterminding a series of jewel thefts, and Kate decides that only she can clear his name. She becomes a highwayman (or perhaps a highwaywoman?), and stops coaches looking for a cache of pilfered jewels so she can exonerate Hal.

One night she stops the coach of Chalfont Blysdale, Earl of Blythindale. Bly (as he is generally called) is intrigued by the highwayman who stops his coach, but takes nothing. So although he is a master spy well-acquainted with exotic killing techniques, he leaves the highwayman alone. Kate is shaken by her encounter with the nobleman, and astonished when he shows up at her doorstep the next day as the guest of her brother. Bly was Josh’s commanding officer during the Peninsular War, and he has come to his home because two of his best friends have vanished from the area.

This is all interesting enough, and it plays out about like you’d expect. The villain is obvious from the moment he first appears, but that’s hardly uncommon in a romance. Bly likes Kate right away, and even though he feels unworthy because of things he did during the war, he can’t help pursuing her. Kate has far fewer hang-ups. She is attracted to Bly and doesn’t mind if he knows.

These two are not at odds for long, but while I liked the way they worked together – and I liked them – I found that several little things pulled me out of the story. None of them alone would have sunk it, but added together they made the book only an average read.

• There is some great dialogue between Kate and Bly, but when they are not talking to each other, Kate spends far too much time talking to herself. Sometimes it’s out loud, sometimes she’s just thinking, but either way it would go on for pages at a time, and it wasn’t particularly interesting.
• Kate’s system for holding up the coaches isn’t terribly logical. Since her home is in a remote area, she has several accomplices from the surrounding populace who let her know when a coach will be coming past. She receives notice hours in advance; she’ll even have dinner and wait for the rest of the household to retire for the night before she leaves. I know a single horse would be faster than a coach, but she would never have this much time unless the coaches were pulled by lame oxen.
• Similarly, the villain is running a huge smuggling operation involving at least twenty evil henchmen. This is a small village, but no one is any the wiser.
• Continuity problems abound. The worst occurs during the finale, when several of the hero’s friends are brought into help. The ones who are staying farthest away get there first, and the ones who live close by take their time in arriving, even though this is a life and death situation.

I really feel that this author shows a lot of potential, particularly in characterization and dialogue. Unfortunately, this particular effort has a rough draft kind of feel. I’ll try her again sometime in the hopes that future endeavors have more polish.