Ah, Stephanie Laurens and the Cynsters. Either you love the series or you could chuck it on the pile of books easily read, easily forgotten. I’m usually of the latter party, but with this novel, I find myself a bit stuck, but not because I’ve enjoyed it so much. Mostly because I’m so confused by it.

I suspect that authors who get themselves going on series end up with bloated family trees of various relatives having made successful love/lust matches and eventually, the author might run out of ideas of what to do with this lustful bunch. I also suspect that is exactly what has happened here.

On A Wicked Dawn, and by the way, the title has nothing to do with the plot, not that romance titles do, is the story of Amelia Cynster, one of a set of female twins who I first encountered when I read Devil and Honoria’s story, Devil’s Bride. Amelia and her sister Amanda were very young, about to make their debuts within a few years, and were more annoying than adorable if I recall. Now Amelia is left in London after her sister makes a lovely match with some lord of somethingorother, and she’s set her sights on Lucien Ashford, Viscount Calverton.

Lucien, quite the honorable gentleman, has spent many years within Amelia’s circle of acquaintance, and many more trying to dig his family out of a mountain of debt left by his wastrel of a father. Without telling anyone about his circumstances beyond his mother and their solicitor/banker/investement wizard, Lucien manages to invest and profit enough to bring his family from the deep scaret to the solid black – or in this case, the purple. Now that Lucien has the money, it is time for him to have the luuuuuv ™.

Amelia has figured out that he was in dire straits for years, and sneaks into his house at three in the morning, the night after he has imbibed his weight in liquor celebrating the windfall that put his family firmly on the side of fortune. She proposes marriage: we’d suit well, and you need my dowry.

Rather than correct her, he agrees. And then passes out.

Now pay attention, because that last part is important. See, in most romance novels, there is a hero, a heroine, some attraction, and some force or problem that must be overcome to reach their happily ever after. Both parties have to earn their happy ending. Sometimes that problem is internal (he stutters or has a predilection for sheep, she spends too much or has a weakness for rutabaga flambe, leading to bad breath and pimples) and sometimes it is external (cue evil villain and don’t forget to make him a gay abuser of animals, too) and sometimes it is not even a person. Sometimes it is cultural differences, class differences, or a big misunderstanding that keeps on going.

This book has two problems to overcome by the authors creation, though there are far more than two problems as far as I am concerned. First, Laurens creates this peculiar theme of control that is found in many of the Cynster novels. He who admits love first, loses control. The men fear losing control of their lives because of their growing emotions for the heroines. The heroines want control over their manly men. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The same is true of On A Wicked Dawn: Lucien fears losing control of his engagement and then his marriage by admitting he loves Amelia, and seeks to secure her declaration of love to assure him that he is not alone in the emotional experience. He also does not want to tell her of his duplicity, because he is afraid…of what exactly I am not sure. Of her being angry at him? It’s a peculiar plot device and not one I understand entirely.

As for Amelia, she’s loved Lucien for years and now that they are married, she sets off building the marriage of her dreams: a love match between two committed people. Where she got the template for that in the London society in which she moved I have no idea. But that’s what she wants. So she’s plotting and scheming to gain his love, while he does the same to gain hers.

And how do they go about securing this love? By exhausting themselves with sex. Seriously, if there was ever a book made for frequent and interminable masturbation or a surfeit of hormones, this is it. They are either kissing, going to second base, rounding third, or just humping like bunnies every fifth page. You’d think they’d have been caught in the act, but no, rooms down the hall from ball rooms, masquerades, garden parties, house parties: all fair game for some humpity hump. And after the marriage? There is still some humpin’ going on. It is non stop. And I have to wonder if the main reason Laurens wrote this book was to answer the question, “Can I write a romance novel that is, content-wise, 78% sex scenes?”

There is another force at work in the novel causing conflict, but it seems like such an afterthought that I still can’t figure out the point of it. Someone is stealing items of value from members of the ton, and various scenes indicate a lady, though one is never sure which lady it is. And the plot is so disconnected from the rest of the story it’s more of an annoyance than a source of intrigue.

However, I can’t grade this lower than a C because I did enjoy reading it. So long as no one read over my shoulder while the hero and heroine did it on a riverbank, in bed, on a desk, in a chair, on the floor, in a closet, in the garden, in a shed, on the grass, in the parlor, on the table, in the foyer….