For the most part, Texas Princess is a very average story, with somewhat likable characters and a decent enough plot. The story wasn’t bad, but it didn’t grab me, and I had enough negative feelings about the writing style that it pushed the book into the minus category.

Tobin McMurray is a very quiet man, perfectly content to live with his brother, Teagen, and sister, Sage, on their ranch at Whispering Mountain. And were his brother and sister not there, he would be happy to live alone with his horses. Because he enjoys the company of his animals far above the company of people, he rarely goes into town and abhors traveling farther, but when Teagen assigns him to take a horse to a spoiled senator’s daughter, he acquiesces.

Liberty Mayfield gets everything she wants and for a moment she wanted to marry Captain Samuel Buchanan, but now she has seen a different side of him that terrifies her. During a party, Samuel drinks too much and kisses Liberty too aggressively. He then strikes one of his soldiers and Liberty realizes that this is not the man she thought he was. She flees to the barn with Samuel hot on her tail, which is odd since horses scare her, but she finds Tobin sleeping in a stall and his mere presence helps her shake off Samuel.

The senator has received death threats and wants to protect his daughter, so he turns to Tobin McMurray for help. After knowing Tobin’s father and brother, he feels he can trust the man to keep his daughter safe. He asks Tobin to kidnap Liberty and take her to their very secure ranch if any attempt is made on his life, which he strongly feels will happen in the next couple of days. Tobin agrees and continues teaching Liberty to ride in the meantime. This is actually a very big deal, because her mother was killed by a fall from a horse and Liberty has refused to be around them for her whole life. But she realizes that they are a means of escape if Samuel gets out of hand.

Well, of course he does, and the night that he slaps her around happens to be the night that outlaws ambush the senator, so Tobin is able to whisk her away in the middle of the night. He takes her home to his family’s ranch and on the way they connect in more ways than one. The communication between the two, or rather the lack of it, brings about a lot of confusion and angst. The characters feel a certain way or say a certain thing, but change their minds moments later without letting the other know. I was thrown by their sudden mood swings, especially Liberty’s.

The biggest thing that bothered me about the book, however, was the writing itself. I just could not get into the flow of things. It was choppy and disjointed, with random thoughts or narrative popping up paragraphs before we need the information. This gave the book a very contrived feeling, which pushed me out of the story often. Sentence structures were very basic and often short, thus adding to the choppiness. Reading such sentences over and over got taxing. I had to force myself to finish the book, even though I didn’t mind the plot. Not every sentence was like this, but a high enough percentage were that it made the book difficult to slog through.

Overall, the story itself was okay. The characters were decent, the conflict worked all right, and the plot was pretty basic. I will not be reading anything else by this author, however, because the writing style did not work for me. If you have read Thomas before and enjoy the style or don’t notice it, then you will undoubtedly like Texas Princess better than I did, especially if you have read the other in the series.