This book had definite peaks and valleys, the low points starting on page one, the high point in the middle, and a serious dip again near the end. It also suffered from a rather mean heroine. Had Mattie St. Clair been a judge in this story, I imagine her nickname would have been something like “the hanging judge”. She tried, convicted and sentenced Clint Beaudry with one look on the first page, without ever taking the time to ask a single question. A definite problem for the beginning.

Clint is a man looking for revenge. A former U.S. Marshal, he turned in his badge after he failed to protect his wife from a brutal rape and murder. He is wracked with guilt because he refused to give up his badge when Emily wanted him to. Now he tracks the man who killed her so that he can take his vengeance. Haven’t we heard this all before?

Clint stops at Mattie’s boarding house for a place to stay and she tells him in no uncertain terms that he is a lowlife gunslinger and not welcome in her home. However, after Clint is shot in the back and seriously wounded, the town doctor asks Mattie, who nurses patients in her spare time, to set up a bed for Clint. Neither Mattie or the doctor believe Clint will live, so Mattie contents herself with that knowledge, but tells her 10 year old son to stay away from Clint, just in case.

Mattie was married to the town sheriff and widowed when she was little more than a teenager. Her husband was a hotheaded idiot who got himself killed, so Mattie decided that men who live by the gun, die by the gun. Strangely, she has no problem with the aging town sheriff carrying a gun in her presence, so it must only be young, attractive men carrying guns that cause problems for her. She is single-handedly raising her son and spends her days doing all the chores around the ranch so her son can play all day, in order to make up for her own lack of play as a child.

Clint lives, of course, and spends weeks recovering. This is the high point of the book. He worms his way into Mattie’s hard heart and provides some much needed guidance for her spoiled son. Mattie begins to relax her know-it-all-attitude. Unfortunately, Clint has his own version of the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and he refuses to let Mattie know about his past. Therefore, she continues to believe he is a murdering gunslinger, even though she lusts after him. She never bothers to ask any simple questions and in situation after situation believes the worst about him. By the time she finally clues in, Clint is leaving to track Emily’s killer. Mattie then makes some more monumentally stupid decisions.

The villain of the piece is so one-dimensional he could blow away in a light wind, and he is conveniently in the right place at the right time to fix Mattie’s dilemma at the end. Although Mattie is supposed to be portrayed as strong and independent, she comes off bitchy instead. Just when I was starting to warm up to her, she reverts back to her old self.

Although there were parts of the interaction between Clint and Mattie that were enjoyable, her overall character and the poorly written villain combined to make this a less than average read. There are worse western romances out there, true, but I can’t really recommend spending much time with this one.