Greyworld1:The Anomaly

This is my new trailer for my new series which is a little different from my usual. Watch it and see what you think.

Caught in a Dream

ANCIENT ROMAN HISTORICAL ROMANCE SERIES

Something Out of the Box!

Scorpio Sons Complete Ebook Series Trailer

Heiress Bride

Heiress Bride was the second book by this author I read, back to back, purely by accident. The blurb drew me: scarred heroine and equally emotionally scare half Indian hero brought together by a matchmaker.

Most of the POV for this story was from the heroine’s perspective, with only the occasional insight into the thoughts of the hero. For that reason, the tension was well developed. Just as in real life, the reader has to go on what she is told and what she surmises of the hero’s thoughts and feelings to get his motivations. And when Nathan informs Ella after their wonderful first time together, and he’s taken her virginity, that he can’t love her, that he’s incapable of love, I really felt for her.  

Now this is the exact plot device used in the last book. Maybe I wouldn’t have noticed the sameness of it, and the scenario of the bad guy secretly trying to kill her, if I’d read a few books by other authors between. But going from one to the next, and finding this less-than-appealing quality in both heroes, I was disappointed. Yes, it gives the heroine something to aim for: getting the hero to fall for her. But with that one cruel announcement I lost any real interest in Nathan, just as I had with Duncan.

Anyway, even though I was turned off by Nathan, who really wasn’t enough of an Indian for my liking anyway, I continued reading because I quite liked Ella. She embraced her new life as a rancher’s wife and worked her fingers to the bone to be the woman he needed. Maybe she oscillated a bit over whether she loved him or not, telling him and others that she did and then denying it later, but she was a woman with courage and determination, a woman who could embrace an illegitimate brother her father kept secret all his life, and then hit him with a bucket when he threatened her life. I liked her development.

And of course she gets the love of her man, and some very exciting sex along the way. So it was a satisfying conclusion. It just would have been more so if Nathan had been more sympathetic as a character. So, he fell in love when he was young, and she rejected him because he was half Indian. That doesn’t mean you marry a damaged woman so you can have kids and tell her after sex that he’ll never love her. That’s just awful. But that’s probably my own preference in heroes. 

Tame a Wild Heart

Tame a Wild Heart is a well written cowboy romance that very much reflects the post-civil war period in the West as I imagined it would have been. Just lately I seem to be going through a phase where everything I read is set in this era.

The hero, Duncan McKenzie, returns to a ranch he left ten years before. In the interim years Duncan has become a bounty hunter, but doesn’t much like the life, so when his old friend asks him to return to the ranch and offers up his daughter in marriage so that the black-hearted neighbour can’t get his hands on her, he’s happy to oblige. Cat was an appealing fifteen year old when he left, (because things were heating up between them,) and in the ten years since, she hasn’t lost any of her appeal. She turns out to be a great kisser too, which sweetens the pot. And because she was crushing on this guy ten years ago, it doesn’t take much to have Cat agreeing to this marriage as well.

There were a lot of secondary characters that fill this book out so that you get the full feel for the era, even down to Indians and a couple who are illegally sold part of Cat’s father’s land and they’re allowed to stay on because they haven’t got the money to go anywhere else.

So I liked the fullness of the story, I was happy with the writing, although it could do with a bit of an edit in places, but it didn’t quite hit the spot for me. And I think the reason was that the romantic couple just weren’t real enough. I couldn’t engage with them. I kept thinking that it would have worked better if the story had started just before young Duncan left the ranch. The dynamic could have been established immediately as the young guy finds himself too attracted to his friend’s young daughter, who follows him around until she finally seduces him into kissing her. Maybe then I would have felt some tension when he comes back. But instead there are two people with a history we’re told about, rather than actually see, who fall too easily into marriage when blackmailed into it by dad.

 

Don’t get me wrong, the sexual sparks between these two are well-written and enjoyable; and I particularly liked the penny dreadful story of Duncan’s adventures as a bounty hunter. That gave the me a wonderful insight into his personality and life. I just wasn’t all that into them as people, and for me that is why I read romance, to meet and fall in love with the characters. And though the story was interesting, it just left me kind of flat. But I would still recommend this book to anyone who likes cowboy romance.