I’ve always had a thing for wagon train romances. I am one of the few people I know who read the entire Wagons West series by Dana Fuller Ross, which I kept reading out of loyalty long after the books stopped being good and the wagons started going back east to places like Kentucky!. When…
Sometimes you come across a book that has a well-described setting, nice (if sometimes annoying) lead characters, and an interesting plot. Sometimes you read your way through one of these books and forget all about them the moment you finish the last page. This was my experience with The Renegades: Nick; I didn’t hate it,…
The first two books in Evelyn Rogers’ Texas Empires triology followed the adventures of the Harden brothers as they made their way to Texas and glory. In Longhorn, Rogers introduces us to Maddie, the youngest of the Harden siblings and the last remaining family member in New Orleans. Maddie is waiting out the final days…
Never Love a Cowboy is the kind of book that makes me wonder why I’m not more familiar with Lorraine Heath’s name. Why is everyone buying that latest glossy big-name hardback when they could be reading this little jewel? Between these inexpensive green paper covers is a book with more emotional depth than anything I’ve…
There’s nothing actually wrong with Bridget, the first novel in Linda Lael Miller’s new series, The Women of Primrose Creek. I can’t pinpoint any specific plot contrivance or writing flaw; it just seems unfinished. At just under one hundred and fifty pages, Bridget reads like the summary of an idea for a novel, one that…
Reading Kit Dee’s Brit’s Lady is the equivalent of eating fast food – it’s quick but unmemorable. While the story reads at a brisk pace and the lead characters have possibilities, neither seems terribly realistic. The villain has that Snidely Whiplash aura, and the love scenes are marred by the. . . over-exuberant use. ….
Halfway through Tessa, the second book in Bobbi Smith’s Brides of Durango series, I realized I was rooting for the sweet young couple to find happiness in their future together. Unfortunately, that sweet young couple was not the hero and heroine, but a pair of secondary characters. When secondary characters become more important to readers…
In Maureen McKade’s Mail-Order Bride, Kate Murphy arrives in the rough mining town of Orion, Colorado, thinking she will be picked up by the fiancé she has never met. An insecure and lonely young woman, she decided to become a mail-order bride when her father’s death left her with few choices. But she soon discovers…
I can honestly say that this book tried. How could it not, when there was everything but the kitchen sink thrown in? We’ve got psychics, ghosts, cheats, liars, evil preachers, evil rich men, orphans, otters. . .otters? There was humor at times, the love scenes were well done, but not even those redeeming qualities could…
To me, an enjoyable read has an interesting plot, characters I can root for, and if I’m lucky, it’s set in a fascinating time and place. An Unlikely Outlaw had two out of three, but when the character I couldn’t root for was the heroine, it became what I call a “what could have been”…
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