THE ELUSIVE FLAME by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

PUBLISHER: Avon, 10/1998
GENRE: Historical Romance
SETTING: England & USA, 1825
PURCHASE: link
MY GRADE: D

SYNOPSIS: Cerynise Kendall has been left destitute and in dire need following the death of her doting patron and protectress. A brilliant young artist tossed from her home with only the clothes on her back, Cerynise must now turn to a childhood companion for assistance - the dashing sea captain Beauregard Birmingham and beg him to provide her with passage to the Carolinas. She seeks a new home and a new life across the waters, but all depends upon the kindness of a charming adventurer who was once the object of her youthful infatuation. Beneath Birmingham′s rugged exterior beats a heart as large and wild as the Atlantic, and Beau readily agrees to aid Cerynise - even offering her his name in marriage, albeit temporarily, to protect his long time friend from scandal. But perilous secrets, determined enemies and tempests of the sea and soul threaten their future and safe passage even as bonds of camaraderie are miraculously reforged as bonds of desire ... and affection becomes passion and love.

MY THOUGHTS: Most of this was just awful. I liked the beginning and the last 50 pages or so. And it was 100 pages too long. This takes place in 1825 and spans about fourteen months. Cerynise is almost eighteen years old. She's American but has been living in England since both parents died five years earlier. Her guardian, Lydia, died and her nephew, Alistair, kicked Cerynise out of the house. He's a terrible person who's out to get money that doesn't belong to him and will travel to the ends of the earth to get it. He's a true villain and I like him.

Cerynise finds her way to where ships are docked and Beau takes her in. He's twenty-six and has known her all her life. This is where the story gets extremely boring. They travel back to South Carolina on his ship, 'Audacious.' They marry to keep Alistair from being her guardian, since she's underage, and for no reason really they don't get along during most of the three month voyage home. Nothing at all goes on except her sketching the crew members since she's a great artist. There's a bit of chemistry between Beau and Cerynise at this point and it does intensify as the story progresses. 

Once they're home, they go their separate ways for a short time then come together when Beau learns about something important involving Cerynise that happened on the ship while he was delirious from a fever. There's a section of about thirty-one pages where she meets Beau's entire family- mom, dad, brother, sisters, ect. and it just dragged on and on. The author clearly wanted to include characters from the two previous books in this series and I didn't appreciate it. It was pure filler material. During this time and toward the end of the story, bad things start happening to Cerynise and they have to find who's doing it. That part was very interesting but got to be too much at the very end, with too much happening all at once. There's a character named Germaine Hollingsworth, a woman who went to school with Cerynise who wants to marry Beau, and she's not happy to learn he married while in England. I like her character.

One thing that bothered me is that this book is too similar to the first in its series, The Flame and the Flower. Both heroines are the same age, down on their luck, end up at a dock, travel to America via ship, and once they're in America, someone's out to get the heroine, but this story was much more boring that the previous one.