It’s harder to write a review for a bad book than it is for a good one. It’s also more difficult to assign a bad book a letter grade: where does the reviewer draw the line between a D and an F? Does the book hit the wall, or just fall to the floor with a loud thunk? For me, the deciding factor is whether or not I can find at least one redeeming quality in the story or the writing. Until I got to the last pages of Lark, I really thought it would end up with a D, but the last few pages pushed it over the limit. A distasteful premise, a wimpy heroine, and unbelievable plot developments made getting to that ending a real chore.

Forced into a marriage of convenience, lovely Lark Elliot Gibb is shocked to discover on her wedding night that her husband is an impotent brute. She only married Cletus so that her aunt and uncle wouldn’t be turned out into the cruel winter that’s about to come down on them. Cletus’s all-consuming goal is to have an heir to his magnificent Colorado ranch, so he bribes Ace Brandon, one of his ranch hands, to act as his surrogate in getting Lark pregnant. When Cletus makes it clear that Lark’s resistance will mean further beating for her and sure death for her relatives, she reluctantly goes along with the scheme.

Ace agrees for two reasons. First of all, he needs the money to go back to Utah and build a new life. A former gambler, he blames himself for his wife’s death and has vowed never to pick up another deck of cards. In the second place, although he’s attracted to Lark, he figures they can pull the wool over Cletus’s eyes, pretend to make love and when he leaves in the spring, he’ll lie and say Lark is expecting. By the time Cletus finds out the truth, Ace will be long gone and so will Lark, since he’s planning to split the money with her.

But the nights in the back room of the cookhouse prove too tempting for both of them and before they know it, they’ve consummated the relationship. Soon they find themselves living for their nights together. Ace has convinced Cletus to lay off beating Lark, since it might jeopardize her chances of conceiving or carrying a baby to term. He also arranges it so that she can go visit her aunt and uncle, living in a cabin on Cletus’s property, and bring them enough food to make it through until spring. Now there are only two questions for them: can they resist the emotional bond growing between them as a result of their physical intimacy, and will they be able to escape Cletus when the time is right?

I had very many problems with this book. First of all, Lark’s relatives coerce her shamelessly and selfishly into accepting Cletus’s proposal of marriage – within 15 minutes of meeting him. Her uncle is shiftless, never having once been able in ten years to provide for his wife and niece. He only sees this as a way out of their current predicament, not giving any thought to what it might bring Lark. And her aunt, although very ill, urges her on, too.

As for Lark, she just accepts everything that happens to her; she never even tries to stand up to Cletus’s brutality. And she makes only token protest against his proposed adultery, the most disturbing element of the story for me. I understand battered-wife syndrome, but that’s hardly an acceptable motivation for her to acquiesce as easily and seemingly guilt-free as she does, and it’s a real about-face for a resourceful young woman who’s been the main reason the family has survived up to this point. I also found it annoying that the poor girl seemed to spend two-thirds of the book cooking for the men on the ranch.

Ace is barely better. He knows Lark needs some joy in her life, and is much more clever than Cletus, but that hardly excuses the glee he takes in fooling him or the lengths he goes to in doing so, let alone the level of enjoyment he reaches when Lark is in his arms.

The writing leaves a lot to be desired. We learn the entire history of both main characters as soon as we meet them, when the judicious use of sprinkling it throughout the book could have served the same purpose, and been a better way to accomplish the task. Characterizations are lackluster and stereotypical: the evil, abusive lout of a husband, the friendly, casual hired hands, the earnest young teenager who tags along after Ace, even a whore with a heart of gold, an old friend of Ace’s he visits while in Denver. And some of the dialogue is truly painful and stilted: “Do what you want to Lark. If you desire, put your soft lips on me.” And later: “You are even lovelier than ever. I have dreamed of you so often. I have awakened in the middle of the night aching for you.”

Then there are problems with time and geography. Eastern Colorado is described as mountainous, when it’s actually made up of a rising plateau and foothills; the mountains begin west of Denver. It takes Ace and some companions two days to drive a herd of 100 barely tamed mustangs from Utah to Denver – over the mountains? At one point, it’s “the last day of November” when Cletus is shot by a sniper – he’s unpopular with everyone – and three days afterward, it’s only “December first.” Where was the author’s editor to catch this oversight? These are only the most egregious examples, I assure you.

Reading Lark was not really a painful task, merely an uncomfortable one – that is, until the ending gave me a headache. Throwing the book against the wall worked almost as well as two tablets of aspirin.