AUTHOR: Diana Bold
PUBLISHER: Cobblestone Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 48k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.99
Tortured by memories of killing his own brother during the Civil War, Tristan Kane becomes a gun for hire, desperate to escape the memories. When he decides to look for an old friend, he doesn’t expect to get shot in the back, or for that old friend to come to his rescue. He takes Tristan home, where Tristan learns that
I have a quibble with the blurb that’s available at the publisher’s website. In the blurb,
The melodrama in this is piled six feet deep. Tristan, who lived in
I’m not spoiling anything. All of that information is out by the end of the second chapter. We then get seventeen chapters of self-loathing and miscommunications and guilty kisses and blame, and it’s just so, so, so heavy. It gets extremely tedious to read. These characters don’t really do all that much except sit around and blame themselves for everything went wrong in their lives, and then they blame each other for the rest. Nothing really happens.
Technically, there isn’t anything wrong with the story. The editing is solid, the prose flows reasonably well. There are some anachronistic details in the world-building that will probably bug historical romance lovers, but if melodrama is your thing, especially in the Old West, this might work for you. Just don’t believe the blurb.
Readability | 7/10 – Technically solid, but so heavy on the melodrama that it gets tedious. |
Hero | 4/10 – Angsty and annoying, with an unrealistic turnaround at the end after some bad behavior |
Heroine | 5/10 – Not quite as bad as the hero, but too bland to really make memorable |
Entertainment value | 2/10 – Far, far too much melodrama to engage me |
World building | 6/10 – There’s attempts to give it period flavor, but dialogue feels hugely modern throughout the story and there are certain anachronisms that jar |
TOTAL: | 24/50 |
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