Snow Angel by Diana Bold

TITLE: Snow Angel
AUTHOR: Diana Bold
PUBLISHER: Cobblestone Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Historical erotic romance
COST: $3.99

Widow Bethany Sinclair is on her way to her sister’s home in Texas for Christmas when a blizzard forces her stagecoach off the road. Only she and Zach Price, an escaped convict being returned to jail, survive. Zach doesn’t have it in him to allow the lovely Bethany to freeze to death in the storm, and together, they find shelter in a nearby cave. Circumstances force them to rely upon each other, but loneliness pushes them into each other’s arms. With the law after Zach, do they have any kind of future once the storm allows them to return to the real world?

Buying Christmas stories are a double-edged sword. They’re invariably saccharine sweet and hopeful, in keeping with the season. It’s very easy for writers to go too far, so unless you have a thing for cavity-inducing stories, you get burned more often than not. You also can’t buy too many or risk overdosing. There’s nothing like reading too many Christmas stories to make a girl yearn for a good old-fashioned slasher story where the hero is a drunk and the heroine a whore. I don’t suppose anybody wrote one of those this year, did they?

One of the few that I read that were more than palatable was Snow Angel by Diana Bold. It’s a simple story – always best when it comes to Christmas fare – about a lonely widow and a lonely, misunderstood convict and the snowstorm that strands them together. Zach is a widower, as well, and the reason he’s been jailed for murder the last five years was because he dared to exact vengeance on the men who killed and raped his wife, and slaughtered his son. He doesn’t regret it, and he’d do it all over again, two facts he’s convinced should show Bethany she is better off without him.

Bethany has had her own share of tragedy. Married for seven years to a man who was ill for six of them and making her miserable as she nursed him, she’s a sweet, lonely woman who is just seeking a bit of company when she turns to Zach. There’s not a lot of depth to her, though she shows spurts of intelligence and a smart plan to help Zach escape the law’s clutches for good. Because of the latter, it’s easy to like her, just like it’s easy to like Zach, because really, how can you dislike a man who will go to such lengths to avenge his wife’s murder?

In the end, there’s nothing too inoffensive about this story to complain about. It’s sweet and simple, and though I don’t think I’ll remember much about it in a few months’ time – let alone next Christmas – it made for a short, pleasant read.

Readability	8/10 – Easy, simple, and flows well.
Hero	7/10 – Borders on stereotypical, but pleasant nonetheless
Heroine	7/10 – Sweet and a little earnest, but believable
Entertainment value	7/10 – One of the nicer Christmas nibbles I’ve had.
World building	7/10 – Enough detail to make it easy to buy into the history without being overwhelming
TOTAL:	36/50