Linda Howard can write fabulous romance – but she can also write some stinkers, and this is one of them. An Independent Wife was first published as an early Silhouette Special Edition. It definitely shows its age and showcases what doesn’t always work in a Linda Howard read: there’s the insufferably arrogant hero, for starters, and the heroine who, despite her protests to the contrary, is a wimp.

Sarah Jerome was a naive and rather unformed young woman when ace reporter Rhydon (Rhy) Baines married her to her great astonishment. Rhy was a hard-driven and goal-oriented man who would drop everything to run after the action – the more dangerous the better. Sarah wept, pleaded, and threw fits. She was afraid for his life and safety, but Rhy would not give up his career. Sarah and Rhy gradually drifted apart until one day he just didn’t come home.

So Sarah did some self-searching, went back to school, got a job, grew her hair long, started calling herself Sallie and lost lots of weight. Now, she is a reporter like Rhy and is a real Little Miss Action Junkie. Sallie is so into her work that she forgets to eat. Well, the newspaper Sallie works for is brought by (you guessed it), Rhy. Sallie thinks that Rhy will not recognise her – she has changed so much – but of course he does.

Rhy does not want Sallie to put herself in danger so he begins to subtly and not-so-subtly manipulate her and her career, refusing to allow her to go overseas, for instance. So Sallie spits and claws and fusses, but it’s like a kitten trying to defeat a tiger – Rhy is immovable. Rhy Baines is very much a Linda Howard hero, over-sexed to the max, and he and Sallie fall into bed. Their relationship is complicated because Rhy has a beautiful model friend who keeps hanging around inspiring Sallie’s jealousy, and Sallie is good friends with a male reporter who is having woman problems and likes to ask Sallie’s advice, inspiring Rhy’s jealousy.

Linda Howard can write good love scenes (can she ever!) and her heroes have got to be the source for Viagra. Rhy and Sallie spend a lot of the book scorching the sheets and fighting, which they do till the end of the book when they are still scorching the sheets, but not fighting – yet.

Sallie is supposedly an excellent reporter with a very good professional reputation, but I never sensed how good she was. Sallie came across as a woman whose love of her career was not very deep-seated – she only became a reporter to show Rhy that she could do something.

And Rhy – such an arrogant, conceited, manipulative, know-it-all! He needed a stronger woman to stand up to him and Sallie was just not that woman despite her protests of independence. At heart, Sallie wanted to stay home, have children and be taken care of. Maddie Duncan from Duncan’s Bride was a homebody who wanted children too – but she came across as a much stronger woman than Sallie despite all of Sallie’s “I want to be independent” attitude. Rhy did have one good characteristic though, he kept reminding Sallie to eat. I swear, I don’t know how Sallie survived given her aversion to food.

When you have male characters who are strong to the point of being overbearing like Linda Howard’s are, you have to pair them with female characters who are just as strong. Dream Man, Mackenzie’s Mountain and Duncan’s Bride are three of Howard’s books that I just love. All of them feature a so-arrogant-you-want-to-slap-them male character, but the female characters in those three books are strong enough to stand up for themselves – Sallie just was not.