I’ve read stories like Courting Claire before, but not in a romance novel. The usual location for such tales is in Ann Landers’ column, with women like Claire writing in complaining about the awful, selfish men they married. Tyler McCane could be their poster boy. He’s the so-called hero of this book and is so selfish and horrible that I couldn’t see why the heroine or anyone else would ever fall in love with him.

Just when Claire Cavanaugh is about to graduate from college, she gets a telegram with awful news. Her adoptive father is dead, and it looks like the family home will have to be sold. Claire collects her sister Emily from the school for the blind that she has been attending, and quickly begins her journey home for the funeral. As they are about to board a paddle steamer, Emily falls into the river and is rescued by a handsome man who turns out to be the owner of the vessel.

When Tyler McCane rescues Claire’s sister, he doesn’t know that he is already involved in her life. He is about to accomplish his dream of combining his gambling boat with a land-based inn and a harbor, and he plans to do it on Claire’s land, which he thinks is owned by Reginald Boothe. Reginald Boothe is a banker who plans to be Tyler’s partner in the venture. Reginald holds the mortgage on Claire’s property, and he plans to foreclose in a matter of days unless she gets her hands on the money to pay him back. Boothe is determined that Claire will not pay him back, even if he has to use nefarious means to stop her.

When Tyler finds out that Claire is about to be kicked off her land, he doesn’t care, because his plans are much more important than the needs of a fatherless young woman and her blind sister. However, Claire is very attractive, so Tyler figures he’ll try to seduce her. He has no plans to marry her or anything, because his mother abandoned him as a child, which left him with the unshakeable conviction that all women everywhere were evil.

Although my feelings toward Tyler at the beginning of the book could be characterized as a casual dislike, it quickly ripened into an outright hatred. At no time does Tyler show the slightest concern for the fact that Claire has just lost her father and is about to lose her home. Claire does almost lose her home, but Tyler inadvertently gives her the help she needs to save it at the last minute. When he figures out what he has done, he is really mad because it will spoil his plans. He hopes that Claire’s gratitude will at least get him a satisfying roll in they hay with her, but no such luck. Then Tyler’s partner gives him a great idea: he can marry Claire and the land will be his! This sounds pretty good to him, so he proposes, with the stipulation that he be able to come and go as he pleases on his river boat. He wouldn’t want to be tied down, you know. Perhaps this is the hero of someone’s dreams, but to me he seemed to be straight out of a nightmare.

The problems don’t end with the non-hero. Reginald Boothe’s plot against Claire drives him to kill a man, and no one realizes he did it even though he is the only person in town with a motive. The sheriff, who is in league with Boothe, declares that the dead man’s death was an accident, even though he has bruises from strangulation on his neck. After this matter is discussed on and off for a good hundred pages, Tyler, who is clearly no dummy, decides something fishy is going on. He still doesn’t suspect Boothe however. There are a couple of other prominent “secrets” that are supposed to be big surprises, but would easily be guessed early on by the average kindergartner.

In short, this Courting Claire is a total debacle, with a complete lack of romance that renders its title a misnomer. Deceiving Claire or Seducing Claire would have been more accurate. Sometimes readers complain about heroes who are too good to be true. I would recommend this book only to readers who are interested in a hero with the opposite problem.