Lone Star follows Crown of Glory in Evelyn Rogers’ Texas Empires series. While the setting is vibrant and the plot interesting, the book is deeply flawed by its characters. Lone Star is yet another western to suffer from a heroine who is supposed to have “gumption,” yet becomes careless from the moment she meets the hero.

Cord Hardin returns to Medina county, Texas to get revenge on T.J. Calloway. Something, or rather someone, appears that could throw his plans in disarray – Kate Calloway, daughter of his enemy. Kate is trying to be the best daughter her father could want, though her efforts are never appreciated. Meanwhile, she wonders if she should trust Cord. The stranger is buying up land all around her father’s ranch. Does he really want to start a ranch? Or is he up to no good?

When Kate is injured and forced to stay at Cord’s ranch, her father tells her to use this as an opportunity to “get closer” to Cord and learn more about him. It says something about Kate’s personality that she agrees to this request. The author fails to use this part of the story to allow Kate and Cord to get to know one another. Instead, the focus is on their lack of trust for one another, which comes off as stereotypical.

Though it’s cut from standard material, the plot pulls off some surprises, particularly near the end. There is an unnecessary subplot involving the Comanches, however, and Kate’s Big Secret is withheld from the reader for too long. As a result, when a surprise character appeared on the scene, I felt cheated.

Kate and Cord clash and yet are attracted to each other from the first pages of this novel. Sexual tension is high. Unfortunately, the element of distrust often tainted the time they spent together so that hostility nearly cancelled out their attraction.

But the book fails most of all because of poor Kate. Her feelings of unattractiveness are too often taken to the extreme, causing her to distrust Cord’s feelings for her. She’s also so loyal to her father (who becomes an over-the-top paranoid psychotic by the end) that she can’t see the truth about him, preferring to lavish her distrust on Cord instead. And, though we’ve been told how much gumption she has, her actions often place her in the too-stupid-to-live category of heroines. Near the end, she finally displays the gumption she was supposed to have, keeping this book from being a total failure. If she had been this strong throughout the novel, I would have been a much happier reader.

Though Ms Rogers created a believable setting and a plot that kept my interest, when at least one major character is so poorly written, I can’t consider a book a success. When one major character is poorly written and the villain is a cardboard cut-out, I consider the book even less successful. Add to that a mistrust factor that seems never to be resolved, and the book is very nearly a failure.