As a reviewer my job description is pretty simple: finish a book and then write about it. It goes without saying that I can’t do the second without doing the first. However, in this case I came to realize that in order to write the review I simply could not continue to read this book, much less finish it. Had I actually managed to finish the book, I would have been incapacitated by the brain damage inflicted from beating my head against the wall, and I would have been incapable of turning on my computer, much less writing a review. I want to do my job; I want to write about this book and let everyone know that if they should see it on the shelves they should walk, not run, to the nearest exit. Consequently, as a favor to all of you, I made the supreme sacrifice of not finishing it so that I would still have the brain power needed to write about it. It was a close call.

Sara Elaine Livingston is the apparent heroine of this novel. To call her too stupid to live would be to insult all other characters who have been branded with that moniker. Sara’s depths of stupidity go far beyond TSTL. She’s too stupid to have been born. You see, Sara desperately wants to get married. She is not in dire financial straits (her father is quite wealthy). She’s not pregnant and in need of a protector. She’s not over the hill (she’s all of eighteen), and she’s not even in love. Sara just thinks it would be great to be married, and it really doesn’t matter much who she marries as long as it’s soon. Sara thinks her father is a mean old bully for keeping her from the aisle for this long (never mind that she hasn’t had a suitable suitor yet nor has she fallen in love with any of her admirers – any man will do). She concocts one ridiculous scheme after another to get away from bad old daddy, and finally succeeds in running away from home with the help of one of her trusty servants, who should have known better. After a few more shenanigans, Sara is off to Montana to pose as Walker McKay’s mail-order bride.

Walker McKay is almost as stupid as Sara. He’s handsome, successful, young and eligible, but doesn’t want to get married until one day when he nearly gets himself killed (until then he had felt himself as good as immortal). But then he complicates things by feeling the need to send away for a mail-order bride instead of marrying one of the numerous local girls who lust after him. Why does he assume that a girl he has never met will be a better bet for a wife? I don’t know, I couldn’t stick around to read that far.

When Sara first deboards the train she is met by one of Mr. McKay’s ranch hands – he is short, old and balding and she mistakes him for Walker (of course she does since she doesn’t have the sense to ask his name first). Right then, Sara has a momentary epiphany that maybe her madcap scheme wasn’t such a great idea in reality. Gee, she doesn’t want to marry just anybody after all! Now, if this guy had actually turned out to be Walker McKay and the book was about Sara getting a much-needed dose of reality and and she ended up having to marry this man and learn to live with him and love him, then I would have been interested enough to continue reading. The real Walker McKay shows up, is as relieved as Sara to find out that his mail-order-spouse is actually beauty personified (isn’t that always the case?), and the two of them set out for his ranch and, I’m sure, more madcap adventures after which they will fall in love and get married, or get married and fall in love. Either way I didn’t care. They deserved each other.

A premise such as this can succeed only if intended as a farce and enough actual humor is there to make that clear. Unfortunately, this plot and these people were presented in all seriousness. The only attempt at humor I discovered was instead embarrassing and revolved around Sara’s two servants. Wadsy and Old Abe were depicted as insulting caricatures of the black post-Civil-War servant class. I know that as a reviewer I have the responsibility of finishing any book I agree to review, but there’s only so much insipidness one person should have to take. As it is my poor brain is already suffering from watching too many Teletubbies episodes with my toddler. That at least is insipidness aimed at children; Marrying Walker McKay has no such excuse.