I’m a sucker for books with deeply scarred characters who must struggle to find peace and happiness. Overcoming angst is my thing. Author Nikki Logan provides angst and relief in spades here.

After former ballerina Eleanor Patterson discovers that the man she called father was really her stepfather, she drives from the Big Apple to poky Larkville, Texas, to meet her siblings since her real father has just died.

There she meets Sheriff Jed Jackson, who puts her up in the guest house on his property. Jed is no stranger to high maintenance big city women, especially since he was engaged to one when he was a cop in New York City. While he doesn’t mind helping a lady in distress like Ellie, he’s definitely keeping his distance from her.

Eleanor is one of those women who’s tried her whole life to do what others think is good for her. Consequently, when the pressure got too much, she developed an eating disorder. Now having gotten rid of it and set herself straight, she’s determined not to let anyone tie her in knots again.

Between them is former police dog Deputy who was traumatized when his handler, Jed’s fiancé, was killed and Deputy beaten nearly to death. As Jed and Ellie circle around one another, Deputy is the glue that keeps them bound.

I usually don’t like books with pets since the pets are all too often drawn as too cute to be believed and take up way too much space in the story. Not so Deputy. Logan knows just when to add him to the mix to make the story flow.

Ellie is an admirable character who’s still shoring up her self-image. She knows where she’s been and she adamantly vows never to go back there. When she confesses to Jed, she starts to realize in the larger scheme of things her problems, while potentially debilitating, shouldn’t be the focus of her life. Healing is more important.

Jed is a more complex person. His fiancé is dead, and he blames himself for a very good reason. As a fictional character he is even more honest than most: When the going gets tough, he can’t stand the heat. Essentially, however, he’s a really good person, so he must find a way to man-up in order to live with himself. The struggle is honestly depicted by author Logan.

The only problem with such a complicated plot in a novel of under 200 pages is that everything from characterization to development is truncated. What should take months to develop and clarify seems to take days, so readers come away feeling as if events are rushed and disjointed. In addition, the entire subplot of Ellie finding her mysterious siblings is pushed so far to the back burner as to nearly fall off the stove. When it’s wrapped up at the end of the book, instead of the catalyst for Ellie’s coming to Texas, it seems to be an addendum. Suddenly some of Ellie’s angst at being in Larkville turns to dust and seems silly.

Both these caveats, however, could be cured by giving author Logan the space to let her tell the story without a page count. Hopefully her next Larkville book will be a longer and more satisfying. If it is, it should be a book worth reading.