His Convenient Virgin Bride has snappy dialogue, a compelling setting, and sympathetic characters. It also has clumsy phrasing, underwritten subplots, and a dumbass leading couple. All of which plant us firmly in C-ville.

Stephanie Ryder is a horse lady, which is absolutely appropriate considering her surname. At the enlightened age of twenty-two she not only runs a multimillion-dollar stable owned by her brothers in Montana, but she also trains horses, coaches riders, breeds horses, and is a shoo-in for the next Olympics. What a gal. But her brothers’ company is in financial trouble, and it’s all because her brothers, unbeknownst to her, are bleeding millions in blackmail payoff. So they hire one Alec Creighton to tell them how they can save their company – but without stopping the blackmail payments or informing their sister that her questionable parentage is the cause of the blackmail. Of course, things get complicated when Stephanie and Alec have sex and she gets pregnant, after which they enter into a marriage of convenience.

Sound plausible? Hell no. But that doesn’t matter. The best of series romance are like Calvados. Or Pixar shorts. Or Saki. Okay, maybe not Saki, but you get the point – they’re supposed to deliver a romance with punch and style, and the rest is all window dressing. So it doesn’t actually bother me that Ms. Dunlop’s story is fraught with improbabilities and eye-rolling galore. But it can’t work if characters’ personalities yo-yo between extremities.

I’m not exaggerating when I say the lead characters are both sympathetic and dumbass. Point in Stephanie’s favour: When she acknowledges that she gave her virginity to a virtual stranger, but determines to move on and not make the same mistake. Point against Stephanie: When she acts like a brat. Ditto Alec, whose moments of intelligence are only equalled by his moments of stupidity.

As for the rest, the writing vacillates between moments of splendidly snappy dialogue to utter incoherence and confusion. The plot and secondary characters do their job, but really belong in a longer book or to someone who read the previous books in the series. And, while I liked the horse world, my enjoyment was subdued by the book’s other problems.

Ms. Dunlop’s biography states that she lives in the Yukon wilds where bears outnumber people. I would dearly love to see her isolate a couple in the Yukon and use the best of her prose to write a humorous, character-driven, balanced story. Here’s to hoping it happens.