I was so hoping A Promise of Roses would be a great Western romance. It seemed to have all the right ingredients – a heroine who owns and runs a stagecoach company (read: strong, independent woman) meets a bounty hunter assigned to investigate recent stagecoach robberies. They fall in love and solve a great mystery. Right?

Well, almost right. Yes, this story has a mystery, but what I’ve described above is just about the whole story. The plot is too thin. Most of the book is spent on bounty hunter Lucas McCain trying to decide whether he should bring in stagecoach owner Megan Adams for being an accomplice to the robberies.

Lucas is asked by a friend to investigate the robberies, but he has a personal agenda, too. He wants to track down the murderer of his wife and son, and kill him. In fact, this goal has consumed Lucas’s life and savings. So he’s torn by his two responsibilities: to avenge his family, or to help his friend and earn a little money.

Problems arise when Lucas begins to like Megan and the conflict intensifies as he becomes attracted to her. Lucas wants to bring Megan to justice and finish the investigation, but he just can’t be sure that she’s the person behind the robberies. In addition, Lucas is frustrated because in every town where they stop, he hears that his prey just left. Because he feels so close to avenging his family, he drags Megan with him as he trails the killer. Why doesn’t he leave her with the sheriff in one of these towns? This would have been a natural and reasonable response, but it’s not really explored.

Lucas eventually takes Megan back to her hometown, but before he drops her off at the jail, they hole up together for a few days of intimacy. I found this to be a long period of time, considering that Lucas was previously consumed with the need to avenge his family. After their five-day hiatus, Lucas turns Megan in to the authorities, and he resumes his search unencumbered.

The character of Megan is very confusing. She’s described as a scrappy, independent business owner, angry because she’s been taken hostage for a crime she did not commit. It would seem reasonable for a woman in this type of situation to try to escape, repeatedly. Lucas doesn’t even bother to tie her up until days after he first captures her, when it occurs to Lucas and Megan that maybe she should be inclined to escape. Still, she does not try to get away until she reads an account of her failing business in the town newspaper; she is then immediately recaptured.

Megan is described as someone who is not given to tears easily, but cries several times in the presence of Lucas. In addition, because of the natural animosity that should have occurred between Lucas and Megan, it seemed as though they acted on their attraction too quickly; a little reluctance and resistance would have been welcome. Finally, Megan sometimes came off as more twentieth than nineteenth-century with her attitudes about nudity and sex.

Overall, this book could have been a lot better. If you want to read this selection, I suggest you borrow it from a friend; save your money for a great Western romance. As an aside, the cover was terrible. It did not convey the couple as described in the book but did show an anonymous couple in a clinch!