I’ve always had a thing for wagon train romances. I am one of the few people I know who read the entire Wagons West series by Dana Fuller Ross, which I kept reading out of loyalty long after the books stopped being good and the wagons started going back east to places like Kentucky!. When I picked up White Nights by Susan Edwards, I was hoping for a good wagon train story, or even a “sort of good in a cheesy way” wagon train story. Unfortunately the book is alternately boring and implausible, and ends up as a disappointment.

As far as I could tell, this story began three books ago when the wagon train started out. As White Nights begins, the heroine, Eirica Macauley, is eight months pregnant with her fourth child. She believes that she is finally free from her abusive husband, and she’s looking forward to starting a new life in Oregon. However, she has never really been on her own and she wonders if she will be able to establish a home by herself.

James Jones doesn’t know why Eirica is even worrying about being on her own. He has loved her for months and has made his intentions quite clear. He tries to help Eirica with her nightly chores, and he loves her children too. As if that weren’t enough to win any woman over, James is very attractive as well.

Eirica can appreciate James’ charms, but she is still leery of becoming involved with another man so soon after escaping her abusive relationship. She thinks she loves James, but she also wants to be able to stand on her own two feet. Will she be able to strike a balance between her love for James and her desire for independence?

This is usually a setting I enjoy, but this is one of the dullest wagon trains I have ever seen. Part of the problem is the pacing, which is very uneven. The first third of the book takes place over a couple of days, and they are not very interesting days either. Mostly we get to hear the thoughts of the hero and heroine, which are rather repetitive; James keeps thinking about how much he loves Eirica, and Eirica keeps thinking how she finds James attractive but still fears for her future. Toward the end of the book the pace accelerates, which helps, but not much. Through most of the book I was longing for something exciting to happen – and I would have settled for a broken axle or a measles outbreak.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed hearing James’ and Eirica’s thoughts if they were more interesting characters, but unfortunately there were flaws in their characterizations. James was bland and too perfect to be real. His utter lack of faults dehumanized him and gave him a rent-a-hero feel. Eirica’s struggle for independence made her slightly more interesting, but often her behavior was hard to believe. The best example of this was the scene in which she and James first made love. She was nine months pregnant and still recovering from her abusive husband, who frequently brutalized her during sex. She had been walking in the hot sun all day and caring for her three children. Yet somehow she still had the stamina to engage in an all night sex marathon. I found this almost impossible to believe. And I know this is picky, but exactly what kind of name is Eirica? It read like a typo.

There are some secondary characters who are a little more interesting than the hero and heroine, and they at least held my attention somewhat. I haven’t read the other books in the series, but apparently many of the secondary characters’ stories have already been told. Perhaps they are more interesting, but I didn’t like this book enough to search them out. Although I was glad to see a book with a wagon train setting, I cannot recommend White Nights. If you are looking for a better example of this type of story, I suggest you find a copy of Maggie Osborne’s Brides of Prairie Gold.