The Golden Leopard - Lynn Kerstan

Back cover blurb

In every adventure, there must be passion....

Lady Jessica Carville wants nothing to do with men after having her heart betrayed. Despite society's disapproval, she has found fulfillment and success as a dealer of rare antiquities for Christie's auction house in London. The last thing she needs is for the scoundrel who once cast her aside to rear his handsome head.

Despite her best efforts, Lord Hugo Duran's sudden return from India piques Jessica's curiosity--as does his tempting offer. He needs her expertise on a quest to locate a priceless artifact that is rumored to have been smuggled into England--a quest full of daring adventure, dangerous intrigue, and unbridled passion.

My Review

7/10 seems to low a score for this book but 8/10 is definitely too high I guess 7.5/10 would seem to make sense but somehow it just doesn't feel right... how about 6/10 for the first half and 8/10 for the second half.


This book was very hard to get into at first I found the first 150 pages to be relatively boring but well written enough that I didn't put the book aside. In addition to that I was not able to warm up to the heroine Jessica until the book was almost over. The hero Duran I found quite likable but he is far from being a favourite. If my first impressions of this book had continued I probably would have only given this book 6/10 but as it was the second half of the book improved tremendously. Jessica quit being such a harpy, the romance picked up and the plot moved along at a fairly nice suspenseful pace.

Some people may have an issue with the plot if they are sticklers for plausibility. For myself I'm willing to suspend my disbelief as long as it doesn't get ridiculous and even then in a well written book it still may not bother me. As such I found the plot well done and quick moving but there were a number of instances that would probably jerk someone else right out of the story.

One thing that did bother me was how quickly the heroine went from wanting nothing to do with the hero to jumping into bed with him - there was sufficient sexual tension prior to this to explain why she wanted to climb into bed with him. However, it would have been nice to be inside Jessica's head at that moment rather than Duran's to see the thought process that lead from her previous stance to the one that had her jumping him like a wildcat.

All in all aside from the less than compelling first half of the book I quite enjoyed the read and I'm looking forward to picking up the next book in the series.