Trey Hargreaves is off to go courting when he comes across Rachel English and a stagecoach stuck in the creek. Even though he’s already late, he stops to give the stagecoach driver a hand. This changes the course of Trey’s life and sets the tone for Linda Lael Miller’s romance, Springwater Seasons: Rachel. Rachel’s first words to Trey, “Pardon me, Sir? Are you an outlaw?” immediately let you know what kind of heroine to expect – and immediately set this reviewer’s teeth on edge.

Rachel has come to Springwater as a schoolteacher at the request of her friend Evangeline Wainwright. Rachel hails from the East and has been teaching for many years when she decides to take this post. Trey is part owner of the local saloon and father to one of Rachel’s prospective students. Trey lost his wife in a shoot-out and Rachel lost her fiance during the war. From the start, these two set sparks off each other and continually fight a losing battle where their attraction is concerned. Rachel immediately feels at home in this town and with the people who live in it. The book is peppered with wonderful secondary characters – even the children are enough to steal your heart.

Rachel’s problem is that she can’t look past the fact that Trey runs a saloon. It doesn’t matter that all she knows about saloons is second or third-hand knowledge, having never been in one in her life. She makes unfair and inaccurate assumptions about Trey’s life and character based on her preconceived notions. Trey is pragmatic about his life, realizing that he does what he does to put a roof over his daughter’s head. He feels he no need to justify the life he leads. The stereotype of the prissy, self-righteous and judgmental Eastern heroine has become tiresome and boring. There are far too many such characters in western romances. Rachel’s insistence at every turn that Trey would do his daughter harm by raising her in a saloon was irksome. It was difficult to believe that she would fall in love with a man and not respect him for who he was. Trey, for his part, respected Rachel’s wish to keep teaching but her acquiescence to his running the saloon was more resignation than actual acceptance.

There was nothing truly surprising about the story and it followed along at a predictable pace. There was one thing concerning Rachel that was a bit of a surprise, but when it was mentioned it mostly seemed glossed over. Wonderful secondary characters and an extremely likable hero aside, the unsympathic heroine and predictable nature of this book rendered it a poor read. If western romances are your cup of tea, I’m afraid you can do a lot better than this one.