The Pursuit Of…, like every other Courtney Milan romance I've read, was solid. The novella follows Colonel John Hunter an infantryman in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War as he's accompanied by British turncoat Lord Henry Latham on his 500-mile journey home to Rhodes Island and the two slowly fall in love.

It was fun to see Milan play in an entirely different era and setting. Like the working class setting of Her Every Wish the outskirts of the American battlefield was not a place I’d seen a romance before. I do wish we got a little more detail on the time period. But I understand the constraints of the “on the road” setting possibly limited what Milan could include.

Unfortunately, I wasn't totally on board with the romance itself. The Pursuit Of… plays out a trope I find incredibly tedious in interracial romances. Here John becomes the catalyst for Henry’s journey to racial awareness. This setup isn’t my cup of tea because so much page time becomes dedicated to the white romantic lead’s anti-racism journey, an arc I don’t find particularly romantic. Milan handles this as gracefully as can be done, John is never burdened with teaching Henry about what life as a black man in the 1870s is like and Henry is initially ignorant and naive rather than outwardly bigoted. But it was never going to be a dynamic I enjoyed.

I do also have to mention, the veneration for the founding of America this book displays wasn't something I connected to. To be fair Milan does provide a lot of criticism for the slavery and white supremacy at the heart of America's founding shining light on the ways freemen were often run out of their homes and that slavery did exist in supposedly liberal northern states. However, the story still concludes that while the men who wrote the US Constitution were flawed the ideas they wrote about were still worthy of an almost religious reverence, which as a non-American, I just didn't connect to.

Despite that, there were still aspects of the story I enjoyed. As much as I found the growing pains of Henry and John's relationship uncomfortable to navigate once they were together the last few chapters of the book were delightful to read. Milan here captures the intimacy and connection and longing between the two beautifully. Even the early chapter as we slowly see them grow fond of each other was sweet.

I also happen to have a great affinity for journey stories that Milan evoked well. The structure of road trip stories is incredibly satisfying and I especially love seeing people build a relationship during a transitory state that they both know is going to end eventually. Milan uses that structure to develop her characters really well.

I will say, however, that I did find Henry and John surprisingly lacking in the interiority I tend to find in most Courtney Milan protagonists. I'm not sure if it was the slimmer page count but I felt I didn't get to know the motivations of these two until later on in the novella than I had hoped.

Overall The Pursuit Of.. was another solid Courtney Milan book. It, unfortunately, included tropes I'm Not a fan of but the content surrounding that was well done.