Jayne Ann Krentz – The Adventurer

The second book in the Ladies and Legends Trilogy series, published November 23, 1990.
Genre: contemporary romance with a dash of suspense
Cover: I am happy to report that I have the trilogy, with a better cover.



Sarah Fleetwood has always gone with her gut, and now it’s telling her that treasure hunter Gideon Trace is the one. The one, that is, who can help her unearth the Fleetwood Flowers, priceless earrings hidden long ago by Sarah’s ancestor. And in pursuit of buried treasure, Sarah and the cynical Gideon just might find that love is the best prize of all.


Sarah Fleetwood is a writer of romantic suspense, and she relies heavily on her instincts. There is a legend about hidden treasure in her family, and she is the current owner of the map. Sarah has been corresponding with Gideon Trace (owner, writer and publisher of an adventure magazine) for four months now, and she just knows he is the one. The one to help her find the missing treasure, and her own hero come to life. And as she is between deadlines, she has taken a few weeks off, to find Gideon and convince him to go treasure hunting with her.
Gideon doesn’t really know what to think of this exuberant woman on his doorstep, who seems to think he is a real hero, and that they are meant for each other. She behaves like they are good friends already instead of just pen pals. She certainly refuses to take no for an answer when he turns her down. He is weary of her motives, having been betrayed before.

So when Gideon finally agrees to be her partner in the search, Sarah is very happy, but her spontaneous hug leads to some heated kissing and when Gideon insults her, she is having second thoughts. But Gideon won’t let her get away so easily, and persuades her to keep him on.


It was a sweet story, with Gideon as the clueless and suspicious male, who keeps messing things up with Sarah. Yes, he was betrayed by his wife and best friend, and set up by said friend later in the jungle, but Sarah was nothing like them. But she was leaps beyond him in their relationship in her mind already, so he had a lot of catching up to do. He was very high handed, so you have to remember this book is written in 1990.
I liked Sarah and her optimism, whenever Gideon did something to push her away, she thought about it and analyzed it until she came up with a reason why he behaved like he did, and she was accurate about it too! To the astonishment and irritation of Gideon of course, who does not want to be analyzed. I loved how she kept on thinking of Gideon as her own hero, the culmination of all those heroes in her books.

They are making progress on the treasure hunt, when the former friend/partner who is supposed to be dead, shows up and wants a piece of the action, and more important, the media attention so he can start scamming investors again. So now Gideon is suspicious again, will Sarah fall for him like his ex-wife did? The guy sure has a lot of flash.

All in all, I enjoyed this story a lot, and Gideon’s two cats add some nice secondary characters to the story. I do look forward to the third book, The Cowboy.

8 stars.





It is no longer available in print as a new book, nor as an ebook, but JAK is very busy getting her enormous backlist available as ebooks. So you will have to wait, or buy a copy secondhand.

© 2014 Reviews by Aurian

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