Hello Stranger - Lisa Kleypas (Ravenels #4)

For some reason I keep going back to Lisa Kleypas, even though none of her recent works have really intrigued me.  The Ravenels series hasn't been strong, and I've found myself let down time and time again.  That was also the case here, with the fourth book Hello Stranger.  However, I do think this was stronger than the preceding three books.

Our heroine here is Garrett Gibson, the female doctor who has been a side character in the previous Ravenel books.  The hero is Ethan Ransom, who we've also seen briefly in passing.  How is this a Ravenel book, you might ask, when neither character is a Ravenel?  Ah.  Well, there's a clear answer there, but if you haven't figured it out yet, I'll let it come out in the reading.

Garrett is wrapped up in her career doctoring those less fortunate than she when she finds herself in a spot of trouble with some sailors while returning home one night.  Armed with a trusty cane, she's pretty confident that she can handle things--but Ethan, who's been following her (creepy much?) steps in and helps out.  He offers to teach her some self defense, after which he says he'll never see her again, but he just keeps coming back, and the pair's attraction only grows.

My big issue with this book is the pacing.  What seems like it really should have been the climactic event happens about halfway through the book, and then the part where they bop around in the country really seems to drag on and on and on.  Garrett is of course a woman ahead of her time--working with sterilization of medical supplies and practitioners and early blood transfusions--but even watching her wield her abilities can't help the struggling pace.  And as the romance is kind of on hold at that point, too, due to Ethan's condition...well.  It's slow.  Very slow.  There's a slight uptake in pace when they return to London, but it's not enough to save the long and dragging part.

Garrett and Ethan's attraction is definitely of the instant, or at least close to instant, variety.  And yet their relationship takes time progress, indicating some issues with pacing consistency here, as well.  That said, I liked Garrett and Ransom, individually and together, more than I liked the main characters of previous books.  Garrett has all the ambition of Pandora but none of the flightiness.  She is smart and steadying but doesn't decry love in favor of her career, and instead embraces that she can have both--after all, she's already broken barriers professionally, so why not personally?  And then there's Ethan.  I kind of feel like I shouldn't like Ethan, and yet I did.  He has a shady background, to be sure, but there's never even the slightest indication that he would hurt Garrett, even through attempting to shield her, which is important.  Additionally, Ethan's profession means that, for once, Kleypas' subplot makes sense.  She continues to have a spy/murder plot shoved into a romance book, something that very rarely works and hasn't worked in her past books, but at least with Ethan being so involved in it, it fits and builds throughout the book without being shoehorned in at the last minute as a way to reconcile the lovers.

Oh, and it was nice to see a historical romance in which neither of the two main characters is wielding a title as part of their attraction.  (No, that does not count.)

Is this Kleypas' most dazzling work?  No.  And honestly, at this point I don't have super high hopes for the last two books in this series.  However, this was stronger than the previous books in the series, having better main characters, a decent romance, and a subplot that, while not the strongest, at least made sense.  It did suffer from pacing issues on both the relationship and subplot sides, however, and so it's not escalating up into favorite romances of the year any time soon.

3 stars out of 5.