Family Business by Emma McKee

TITLE: Family Business
AUTHOR: Emma McKee
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 62k)
GENRE: Contemporary romantic suspense
COST: $3.99

Loan officer Nora Bainbridge’s great-aunt is as eccentric as they come, but then again, as an aging actress from Hollywood’s golden era, she’s expected to be. When she breaks her leg, she asks for Nora to move in and take care of her cat, a financial arrangement Nora can’t refuse right now. Little does she know that the TV producer poking his nose around, looking for information on her Aunt Elnora’s ancient connections with the mob, is really an FBI agent, or that he just might be the answer to her recent dry spell…

When an author’s humor works for me, I’m much more inclined to finish a book, even when I can see its flaws. This was one of those cases.

It opens with FBI agent Luke McKinnon staking out aging Hollywood actress, Elnora Bainbridge, in hopes he can determine whether or not his teenaged crush is involved in a stolen art scam. He witnesses her take a fall while chasing her cat and calls 911 anonymously. That same fall puts Elnora in the hospital, and prompts her to pay her great-niece, named after her, to housesit and take care of the over-indulged cat. Nora agrees only because she needs the money. She’s barely making ends meet as she struggles to regain her financial footing after her ex cleaned her out. Luke shows up and introduces himself as a television producer, interested in doing a show on Elnora. He’s struck by the physical similarities between the two women, and it becomes harder for him to separate his growing feelings for Nora with the pressing evidence that Elnora really is involved in something illegal. He should know, after all. His grandfather was one of the mobsters who fought over Elnora before she gave up her acting career for good.

I fell for this story very early on, mostly because I was laughing out loud in the first few pages at Luke’s spying antics. The humor in this worked for me, mostly because I got sucked in by Luke’s appalled thoughts that he would now be scarred with memories of his favorite teenaged crush running around naked in her eighties. It’s a little silly, but that farcical nature worked within the context of the story, keeping it light for most of its length. Not all of it was a success. I’m not a fan of puns at all, and having the nosy neighbor named Ima Payne was mostly just eyeroll-worthy. Still, I liked Nora and Luke’s self-deprecating humor enough to like them in conjunction, thus making it easier to invest in their potential romance.

The supporting cast is colorful as well, from her spirited Aunt Elnora with her illicit online businesses, to Elnora’s attorney Albert, all the way to the overweight, over-indulged cat, Mr. Witherby. Nora bounces around from person to animal with a refreshing aplomb, and if she sometimes seems a bit scattered as a result, it’s nice to be remembered that events are happening very quickly within the story (so quickly that at least once, the author messes up the timeline). More get introduced as the story progresses, and it’s the firm addition of the Mob (as opposed to the hints that they might be involved at the top of the story) that actually starts weakening the tale.

So much is made about what might have happened, the truth is very anticlimactic when it comes out. Then, it plays out so quickly, in a scene that’s far too talky even for a farce, that I was left with a vague sense of, “That’s it?” Add to that a time jump at the end that, while justified, watered down the response rather than heightened it, and I was a little disappointed by the time I got my HEA. If only the last third had lived up to the hype of the first two. This could’ve been truly remarkable then.

Readability	8/10 – Humor goes a long way in smoothing over rough transitions and an anticlimactic ending
Hero	7/10 – His perspective was what enticed me to make this a definite finish, funny and just deprecating enough to be charming
Heroine	7/10 – Self-aware with just enough of an edge
Entertainment value	7/10 – I responded to humor in this, as well as the obvious love for old movies, though the ending didn’t live up to the promise of the first two-thirds
World building	7/10 – Enough hints to make it interesting, not enough to make it rich
TOTAL:	36/50

Boot Hill Bride by Lauri Robinson

TITLE: Boot Hill Bride
AUTHOR: Lauri Robinson
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 76k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.50

Desperate to escape her politician father and stepmother, Randi Fulton runs to her aunt, only to have to run yet again when her presence risks discovery. She takes refuge in a tent outside the construction of a new hotel in Dodge City, but its owner, Howard Quinter, comes home in the middle of the night. They’re discovered in bed together the next morning by both sets of parents, at which point Ma Skeeter demands a wedding. The two are wed, and Howard vows to protect Randi from her terrible father and his schemes to be the next governor…

I don’t end up following a lot of series. I can’t come into a series in the middle, so if I miss the first book, unless I end up discovering the author with a different title, I just won’t go back and get it. Frankly, there are too many books out there to try. This Quinter Brides series has been an odd duck for me, but I’m not quite ready to give upon it yet.

Howard Quinter is the third brother to get forced into a shotgun wedding at the hands of his strong-willed mother. His bride is runaway Randi Fulton, the daughter of the man running for governor representing the Populist party. She tried to escape being sold off to marry a much older man by going to her aunt in Dodge City, but her aunt works in a whorehouse, and when her presence is in risk of discovery, she takes refuge in Howard’s tent. Neither wants to be married, but when Howard sees how awful her father is, he lets his argument go. Besides, there’s no saying no to Ma when she gets a bee in her bonnet. She vows to do anything she can to help Howard get his hotel up and running, and when it turns out she loves to cook as much as he does, it looks like a match made in heaven.

This book had one of the stronger starts of this series yet. I’ve had issues in the past with poor editing, but this didn’t suffer from it. Randi was taking charge of her future, Howard was appropriately honorable, and Ma and the rest of the gang were as entertaining as ever. I was charmed and reading with a huge smile on my face. The prose is never very sophisticated and the plotting was simplistic, but that’s not the appeal in this series. It’s the characters, and I was rather enamored with who I was meeting/getting reacquainted with.

But then I realized Randi wasn’t living up to the strong introduction she’d gotten. The woman who’d taken charge of her destiny became this crying mess, breaking down in every other scene. She had zero self-esteem and it showed. I grew very weary of her constant soppy attitude, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Howard remained a strong, noble presence, I would’ve stopped.

On top of that, the cleaner editing of the beginning disappeared halfway through. It started with verb tenses slipping, present coming in where everything has been and should have remained past. Then came the misspellings, more and more the closer I got to the ending. Combine that with Randi who remained a wet rag until the last few pages of the book (and no, one last scene of strength isn’t enough to counter nearly 70k of wimpiness/crying), as well as the sweetness morphing into chapter upon chapter of sappiness, and my enjoyment diminished.

Will I read the next book? Probably. Am I in a hurry to pick it up? No. I want to love these stories, and I do with parts of them, but the weaknesses keep cropping up. If the Quinter boys weren’t so entertaining, it would be a lot easier to quit. But I kind of still love them, so…yeah, I’ll pick the next one up. At some point.

Readability	6/10 – What started out promising gradually deteriorated in regards to simple mistakes, which, combined with the added sap, dragged it down even more
Hero	8/10 – The saving grace, strong and heroic
Heroine	4/10 – Too damsel in distress for me, her constant crying got to be a joke by the end of the story
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was enamored with this for the first third, but as soon as the editorial issues and Randi’s crying tendencies set in, became much less so
World building	8/10 – The one thing about the Quinter books is that I always feel like I’m there
TOTAL:	32/50

The Serious Moonlight by Janet Halpin

TITLE: The Serious Moonlight
AUTHOR: Janet Halpin
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 18k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $3.00

Anna accepts the invitation to her 25^th high school reunion, wondering if she’ll get to see her one regret from high school – the boy next door who was her best friend and then asked her out to prom only for her to turn him down…

Wild Rose Press has a series of unrelated books all about reunions of the class of ’85. I’ve refrained from purchasing most of them, but this one caught my eye.

When it comes to reunion stories, it’s hard to make them unique and this one is no different. Twenty-five years after the fact, divorced Anna regrets turning down her longtime friend Rick’s invitation to prom, and attends the reunion in hopes he’ll be there. She’s still friends with the same two girls who talked her out of accepting his offer in high school, but the only kiss that ever made her toes curl was his. She’s always wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t been scared of what it all meant. She gets her chance when he shows up, but his behavior isn’t clear. She can’t tell if he still harbors anger about what happened, or is willing to move on from it. Because he lives in San Diego, she’s only got reunion weekend to find out.

There aren’t many surprises here. Anna is nice enough, but fairly boring. The most interesting thing she does is have such a long childhood friendship with the scarred Rick. Rick, on the other hand, shows signs of being really interesting, though his first appearances in the story are marred by rather schizophrenic behavior as he flipflops between anger and attentive so quickly I got whiplash. Put them together, however, and there’s an easy sweetness to their story, and I found myself smiling when they finally got past their initial wariness of each other. The ending is appropriately saccharine, but it would’ve been better served by having secondary characters that didn’t make me bristle. I didn’t like either one of Anna’s friends, and couldn’t really see why they’d all continue being friends. They take up a lot of page time, too. Too much for me to really enjoy.

Still, for the romance reader looking for a taste of nostalgia and sweetness, this one isn’t that bad. The detail is a little more vivid than is usually found in these sort of short contemporaries, and the use of a slightly damaged (though still kind of stereotypical) hero lovely.

Readability	8/10 – Sweet and unassuming, with enough detail to make it real
Hero	7/10 – He seems a little too back-and-forth in the first half, but otherwise sweet
Heroine	6/10 – Her initial motivations were weak, but I warmed up to her
Entertainment value	6/10 – I was in the mood for something easy and sweet, and that’s pretty much what I got
World building	6/10 – Not a ton, but more than I usually find short contemporaries
TOTAL:	33/50

Heart of Gold by Laurel Natale

TITLE: Heart of Gold
AUTHOR: Laurel Natale
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 88k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $7.00

Matt Sutherland has one goal – to earn enough money mining gold to return East and marry the woman he loves. When he arrives in Arizona, he happens across an auction for a claim, or rather half a claim. The other half belongs to the seller’s sister, who refuses to sell. Matt decides to take a chance and ends up purchasing the claim, partnering up with Deidre Connelly. She teaches him what she knows, and they develop an easy alliance. Over time, they even develop more…

While I love finding memorable characters I actually like, if I can’t get past technical issues like headhopping, it doesn’t make a difference what kind of story they might have.

Set in old west Arizona, this is the story of two opposites who come together. Matt Sutherland is from Pennsylvania, with dreams of marrying the rich young lady he’s in love with. Deidre Connelly is an illiterate young woman with dreams of making enough money panning gold to be independent someday. Matt purchases her drunken brother’s claim, and the two become uneasy allies. Dee teaches Matt what he needs to know, and he teaches her how to read and write. He treats her with respect, something she’s not used to, and while she’s attracted to him from the start, he takes longer to accept his attraction. She’s not a lady, after all, and he’s in love with someone else. But their proximity and circumstance conspire against them.

The two leads are actually quite enjoyable. Dee is spunky and determined to fight for herself, mostly because she’s had to do it for so long, while Matt has an honorable streak a mile wide. Combined with his strong work ethic, he makes an appealing hero for a while in the beginning, at least until he starts treating Dee as less than she is just because she doesn’t match his definition of refinement. It doesn’t last, thank goodness, but it was there long enough to annoy me. I imagine I probably would be more forgiving toward him if I didn’t like Dee as much as I did.

However, liking the characters is different than liking the story, and the fact of the matter is, this is riddled with headhopping. Sometimes it’ll last in a single POV for a few pages, but there are too many sections where it will jump back and forth after only a few paragraphs. It destroys any sense of anticipation of what the other character might be feeling in tenser situations and gave me such a feeling of whiplash that I put this down constantly because I just couldn’t take it. By all rights, I probably should have stopped reading because it bothered me so much, but I liked these two. I wanted to see their happy ending. It took me way too long to get to that point, however, and wanting to see it and actually feeling it in my gut like I would a really great romance aren’t the same thing. Because I didn’t feel the HEA at all. All I got from it was a sense of closure and a certainty that this author’s style is just not for me.

Readability	5/10 – The headhopping gave me whiplash and made it all too easy to put down
Hero	6/10 – I liked his hardworking ideal, but his attitude toward Dee for the first third really annoyed me
Heroine	7/10 – I really liked her spunky, determined attitude
Entertainment value	4/10 – Not even characters I could warm up to could save my irritation with the headhopping
World building	8/10 – I don’t know if it’s all historically accurate, but it did feel authentic
TOTAL:	30/50

Let's Misbehave by Rae Summers

TITLE: Let’s Misbehave
AUTHOR: Rae Summers
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 20k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $3.00

Jazz singer Gabrielle wants to embrace her freedom, taking pleasure wherever she can in search of filling the holes left inside her at her father’s death. When she meets the uptight Sebastian at his bachelor’s party, she’s unsettled by the way he seems to read her. He, on the other hand, can’t get the free spirit out of his head, but it’s impossible for him to turn his back on everything he’s had to devote his life to, even though he feels trapped by its constrictions…

Though this is a short novella, I was utterly entranced. Color me surprised when I slipped into the Jazz Age London setting with little problem, and got lost in the emotions surrounding these two lost people.

The story is a simple one. Wild child girl meets uptight boy. Each misunderstands the other, until they take steps to see past their surface misconceptions to the truths that were hinted at in their first meeting. Love affair blooms. Differences rest in the character’s roots. Gabrielle is a Flapper who yearns for the freedom so much of her generation is striving for, determined to run from the emptiness inside her left behind at her father’s death. Sebastian is the only remaining son of a politician, forced into a life meant for his older brother before the brother was killed in the war, fighting against all his natural instincts to let his control go. They feel iconic at the same time they come to life, their emotions worn on their sleeves like a hungry desperation. They are the heart and soul of this fervent romance, and completely swept me up in everything they were experiencing.

It’s helped by a smooth authorial voice, with just enough lyricism in the descriptions to give it an easy, lovely flow. It’s not overbearing, and while I can’t be sure if it’s all completely accurate, nothing jarred as really wrong, so I was able to immerse myself into the love story unfolding before my eyes. I loved, too, that nobody’s villainized or canonized. Even characters I thought risked such treatment became fully fleshed by the end of the story.

I’ll remember these two and their driving needs for a long time, I think. I’m very curious now to find out if this author has written anything else. If she can sustain this kind of emotion for an entire novel, I imagine it would be a really magical experience indeed.

Readability	8/10 – Smooth, with an easy lyricism
Hero	8/10 – I ached for his loneliness and determination to do what he perceived was the right thing
Heroine	7/10 – I needed more of her motivations early to truly feel for what she was experiencing
Entertainment value	9/10 – As simple as the story was, I was completely and utterly entranced with it
World building	8/10 – I’m not sure how accurate everything might have been, but it felt real, with the sense of lively desperation I associate with the time period
TOTAL:	40/50

The Vampire's Madam by L. Rosario

TITLE: The Vampire’s Madam
AUTHOR: L. Rosario
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Short story (roughly 8k)
GENRE: Paranormal erotic romance
COST: $2.00

A madam of a high-end brothel in London, Janna has been infatuated with one of her regulars for the entire two-and-a-half years he’s been coming to her business. Not once in all that time has she offered to service him herself, but after she witnesses a particularly torrid night with one of her girls, she decides that she’ll allow no other girl in her employ to give him what he needs – her blood…

Finding an excellent short story in the romance genre is difficult, mostly because authors usually prove too ambitious within the story’s parameters. This one is yet another that falls woefully short.

The story takes place in Victorian London, in a high-end brothel run by the half-Welsh/half-Indian beauty, Janna. Janna has been shunned by society her entire life because of the color of her skin, and takes great pride in running one of the most successful establishments in the city. The only thing keeping her from true satisfaction is seeing the man she lusts after come into her business every Wednesday night and going off with one of her girls instead of her. After two and a half years, she gives in to the voyeuristic desire to see what’s going on and discovers that the gorgeous Hugh de Troyes is actually a vampire. She decides then and there that no other woman in her employ will see to his needs. She can give him everything he desires.

If this story had stuck to being erotica, it just might have worked. The set-up is a little trite, but the heat in the voyeuristic first third was sufficient to hint at how explosive the rest of it could be. However, it doesn’t settle for that. Instead, it attempts to be a meaningful historical/paranormal/romance on top of the erotica, and in the space of just less than eight thousand words, it just didn’t succeed. What’s meant to be romantic declarations of unending love come across as just silly. Hugh is a six-hundred year old vampire who claims to have been alone all this time, and that Janna is the one for him. Seriously. They’re making vows to spend eternity together with barely any time at all to get to know either one of them, let alone the fact that Janna really knows very little about the vampire’s current life, only what she’s gleaned from history books. History we’re told about toward the end of the story as if it actually has time to mean anything by that point. It’s one big information dump that feels irrelevant to the rest of the story except to justify expecting readers to buy into the “romance” part of it.

It didn’t work. It pulled me even further out of the story. The sex ends up mired in all this melodrama and clumsy writing, Hugh and Janna become little more than flat figures trying to fit into the niches the author has created, and the story itself is uninspiring.

Readability	7/10 – Hot when it had to be, but mostly just inoffensive
Hero	4/10 – Hints of appeal before the story derailed
Heroine	4/10 – Mostly just really horny
Entertainment value	3/10 – It can’t decide what it wants to be and ends up being schizophrenic as a result
World building	5/10 – Some details are described, but most of it’s either relayed in conversation or glossed over completely
TOTAL:	23/50

Forbidden Thunder by Kathleen Lash

TITLE: Forbidden Thunder
AUTHOR: Kathleen Lash
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 93k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $6.00

When one of the company trucks gets in a precarious accident, Caila does what her trapped brother asks and calls Four Sons Towing to help them out. Little does she know that in doing so, she’s settling an old debt between their fathers, but rather than yank the livelihood away from a lot of good people, she’s able to come to an agreement with John Thunder, the man who now runs the towing company. It means putting in a lot of hours and making a lot of sacrifices, but more importantly, it means spending a lot of time with a man who drives her senses crazy…

Readers are always on the hunt for books that blow them away, so it’s always a disappointment when yet another one fails to live up to that hope. This one definitely falls into the realm of missed opportunities.

It starts off all right. Caila runs the business end of her family’s trucking company. When her brother is in a dangerous accident, he instructs her to call Four Sons Towing, even though their father strictly forbade them from doing so prior to his retirement. She displays courage and strength as she steps in to help however she can, at the same time meeting John Thunder, the son who now runs the towing company. Little does she know that a deal was made forty years earlier. In order to settle a lawsuit, Caila’s father agreed to pay $4,000,000 to John’s father in the event his company ever called the Thunders for help. There is no way the company has that kind of money to settle the debt, but Caila manages to finagle a settlement with John, preying on his sense of fairness to not put a lot of innocent people out of work. It forces the two of them to work in close proximity, during which time their attraction combusts.

The story goes on from there. And on. And on. At over 90k, it’s not a fast read, mostly because it gets bogged in really sloppy perspective and scene shifts, poor pacing, and tedious melodramatic events that end up repeating themselves in an attempt to put the principals at risk. Where John had seemed wonderfully alpha at the beginning, by a third of the way into the story he simply comes across as controlling and sullen, not appealing at all. He claims to admire her strength, but every time she displays independence in a way he doesn’t like or approve of, he goes off on her in the most condescending fashion imaginable. The romantic progression was jerky at best, with them being awful to each other and then suddenly chewing each other’s faces off. Plot points lurched out of nowhere to create drama, during which the narrative was so clumsy it was often hard to understand what exactly was going on. Then, I had to put up with what seemed like serious injuries getting ignored in favor of sexual escapades.

There was mild hope in Caila, but that got destroyed by the relationships surrounding her. Caila sacrificed a lot for her family and company, always putting her all into her work, her own needs on the back burner. I really liked that backbone in her, as did John. What creeped me out was her relationship with her brothers. They’re a very close family, but incredibly touchy-feely. This capable young woman gets pulled into their laps, gets her hair caressed, gets her face constantly touched, in ways that seem inappropriate from brothers. It’s made worse when John does the exact same thing. What was likely meant to be innocent becomes cast in a romantic, intimate light, until it got to the point where I would cringe every time another scene with a brother showed up. Which was a lot. She had four of them, after all. It’s explained away as a reaction to their traumatic childhoods, but that comes too late in the story to do any good. My feelings on them were already cemented.

I guess I’m still on the hunt. It’s too bad, because under better conditions, John is a type of hero I’d totally fall for.

Readability	6/10 – Sloppy POV, poor pacing, and repetition problems
Hero	4/10 – Intense but not in a good way, controlling and dour
Heroine	5/10 – Strong and independent, but inconsistent and her relationship with her brothers creeped me out
Entertainment value	3/10 – The prose was a mess, the relationships a little creepy, and the repetition/overkill on problems too much to believe
World building	7/10 – Well, she knows her trucking industry, that’s for sure
TOTAL:	25/50

Badland Bride by Lauri Robinson

TITLE: Badland Bride
AUTHOR: Lauri Robinson
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 74k)
GENRE: Time travel romance
COST: $6.00

Lila Scott is on the run from a man determined to kill her. Skeeter Quinter is a ghost in the house she decides to hide in. Together, they manage to evade the psycho, but when Lila ends up in the 1880s and Skeeter comes back to his mortal form, their problems are only beginning…

I read the first book in this series quite some time ago, and have been buying subsequent installations as they come out, though they’ve languished on my TBR pile for quite some time. After reading this second book, I’m starting to wonder if I should have saved my money on the books that follow it.

It starts out in modern-day Kansas, with twenty-two year-old Lila Scott trying to escape the psycho who raped her. Pregnant with his child, she discovered his sordid past and now he wants to kill her before she can make things worse for him. She decides to hide in an abandoned house, but in actuality, the house isn’t nearly as abandoned as she thinks. It’s haunted by Skeeter Quinter, and when he realizes she’s in trouble, he helps her escape through a tunnel that leads into a nearby cave. When Lila emerges, she finds a half-naked man asleep in the cave, a man who turns out to be Skeeter back in his body. He rejoices that he’s not a ghost anymore, but she is determined to get back to the future. The only problem with that was Skeeter destroyed the tunnel so the psycho couldn’t follow them. With no other choice, Lila goes with him back to his family. His plan is to get his brothers to help him dig out the tunnel and help Lila find a portal back to her time, but once Skeeter’s Ma finds out she’s pregnant, another shotgun wedding takes place.

I wanted to love this. I had fond memories of the first, so I settled in thinking this would be a great comfort read. The beginning hints at some great tension, but almost straight away, technical issues arise. On the very first page, “loosing” is used for “losing” and by the third, the verb tense starts fluctuating between past and present. I hung in there, though, mostly because Skeeter got introduced. He’s charming, funny, and full of heart, and I was genuinely concerned about Lila enough to want to see her safe. So I plugged through the less than clean prose. Soon, however, I developed another stumbling block. Lila herself. The charm she exhibited at meeting Skeeter gets derailed very quickly as she becomes obsessed with returning back to the future. She’s convinced she’s going to die in childbirth since it’s the 1880s, and she builds this issue up to mythic proportions in her head. She does this so much that when she meets Skeeter’s pregnant sister-in-law, she begins badgering her about taking it easy, as if she’s some expert on pregnancy (it got to the point where every time she referenced looking up information on pregnancy on the internet, I rolled my eyes). Lila becomes so self-centered and annoying that I actually started to really dislike her, and when she’s half of the romantic equation, that’s not good.

It’s a good thing that Skeeter stays so lovely, because I would never have finished this otherwise. He’s helped by his colorful family, characters I find myself adoring all the more for putting up with Lila. Kid and Jessie from the first book are happy together, and hints of what might be a future pairing with Bug and Eva are appealing. I even liked Skeeter’s Sioux friend, Buffalo Killer (especially at the end with the exchange of secrets between him and Lila, that was particularly well done and very humorous). They helped make the story more tolerable. I needed something because I wasn’t getting it from Lila or the plot (the details regarding her psycho were dodgy at best, silly at worst).

I have more of the Quinter Bride books on my TBR pile. At this point, I don’t know when I’ll get to them. The charm has been tarnished a little by how much I disliked Lila and her selfish, immature attitudes. I can only hope she doesn’t show up very much in the subsequent stories.

Readability	5/10 – Editorial mistakes abound, including missing words, misused/misspelled words, and tense shifts, so it feels like a first draft rather than a polished copy
Hero	8/10 – His heart and humor are the sole reasons I stuck with reading this
Heroine	5/10 – Self-centered and so single-minded she comes across as highly immature
Entertainment value	6/10 – The romance flounders, and the plotting is shallow and almost silly, but I do love the Quinters
World building	7/10 – Points for the historical setting, but the handling of the time travel aspect was sloppy
TOTAL:	31/50

Highland Arms by Cathie Dunn

TITLE: Highland Arms
AUTHOR: Cathie Dunn
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 63k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $5.50

After her reputation has been sullied in Edinburgh, Catriona MacKenzie has been exiled to her godmother’s estate in the Highlands, an escape she is desperate for since she was falsely accused of promiscuous behaviors. There, she meets Rory Cameron, a man she wants to hate but finds herself attracted to even when he treats her appallingly. A Jacobite, Rory is determined to keep love and relationships far, far away, unwilling to have someone mourn or hurt for him, but from the moment he meets Catriona, his senses are cast awhirl. She is clearly in need of help, fragile and dependent on their good will. His political beliefs run deep, but just maybe, she is the woman who can change his mind about the future…

Sometimes, it doesn’t matter how much I love the history. If I don’t like the main characters, nothing is going to save the story.

Catriona is traveling with her awful brother Angus through Scotland, on their way to her godmother’s. She’s been banished from Edinburgh after her fiancé made false accusations regarding her promiscuity, claims her brother backed up as part of a deal. Catriona is glad to be rid of the city and her terrible fiancé, especially since the Highlands appeal to her. So does Rory Cameron, a not-by-blood cousin she meets along the way. She’s shocked to realize he lives with her godmother, mostly because he’s the most attractive man she’s ever seen and her senses go haywire whenever he’s around. Rory is deeply involved with the Jacobites and refuses to have any emotional connections to people, as a means of keeping them safe should something happen to him. And considering he’s stashing arms for an upcoming conflict, something most likely will. The problem is, Catriona figures out very quickly what he’s up to. Toss in the fact that he’s just as attracted to her, and it’s disaster waiting to happen.

My biggest problem with this story? Catriona. Hands down. She’s emotionally fragile and cries at the drop of a hat. Her tears are referenced more than thirty different times in this novel. By the halfway point, I was ready to shove her into the loch and hold her down just to put her out of my misery. Her moments of backbone offer hints of the character she could’ve been, but any hope for liking her is destroyed when she starts to cry or tear up again paragraphs later. How am I expected to believe that a man like Rory would fall for her?

To be honest, though, he’s not much better. He assumes the worst of Catriona almost from the start, and his constant pulling her close/pushing her away grows tiresome early on. His behavior turns at the drop of a hat, affording little continuity and almost no explanations that actually make sense. I liked that he was so politically involved and seemingly capable, but that was about it. Oh, and he didn’t cry as much as Catriona. In this story, that’s a point in his favor.

The suspense and action of his involvement in the approaching uprising could have been taut if it wasn’t ruined by Catriona’s presence. She dampens every scene she’s in, usually by crying, and shatters any sense of tension that might have been generated. There are some better personalities in the supporting cast, but their doting on her baffled me to the point of losing respect for them. As much as I love Scottish history, this might have turned me off to reading anything about it in the near future. I need time to forget about this one first.

Readability	7/10 – Repetition in description and actions gave it a ho-hum factor, though it was mostly clean
Hero	5/10 – His push/pull of the heroine grated
Heroine	3/10 – Weak and too tearful for my tastes
Entertainment value	4/10 – As much as I love Scottish history, disliking the primaries really dragged this down
World building	6/10 – Though it’s obvious the author knows the setting, the repetition in the prose ends up stunting its vividness
TOTAL:	25/50

Ghost Unlaid by Marie Treanor

TITLE: Ghost Unlaid
AUTHOR: Marie Treanor
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 28k)
GENRE: Paranormal romance
COST: $3.50

Julie Macbeth works for the Scottish National Library, but her latest assignment has her more excited than ever. It’s one of the largest personal collections she has ever seen, and her job is to catalog it. It’s not just comprised of books, however. The library in which it’s housed is haunted by the ghost of a man who claims to be a Scottish king, killed over a thousand years ago. Julie doesn’t see him as a ghost, but as a man who’s reminded her what it’s like to love again…

Since I’ve been having less than great luck lately, I decided to go with an author I usually enjoy. I wasn’t disappointed, though I didn’t love this as much as I’ve loved other work by her.

Julie Macbeth works with rare books for the National Library in Edinburgh. Her new boss, a man she resents for taking the job she wanted, punishes her for a minor indiscretion by assigning her to catalog a new collection that’s become available to them. The owner is eager to sell as he’s convinced the house he’s inherited is haunted. She goes to work on it, and in the library meets a man who spends most of his day reading. She assumes it’s the owner, but speaking with the housekeeper later proves that wrong. The lack of information on who he really is doesn’t bother her that much, since he’s funny and gorgeous, thoroughly charming her very quickly. It’s not until she starts to suspect that he’s crazy because he thinks he’s a ghost that problems arise.

Ghost stories always require a measure of suspending disbelief in order to work. They’re helped when characters act and react in what I consider intelligent ways. This novella benefits from having a heroine with just the right amount of skepticism about what she’s being told. She doesn’t accept it blindly, but at the same time, there’s not a ton of time wasted over her agonizing about it all. It’s a delicate balance, and works extremely well here, primarily because the chemistry between the hero and heroine was already off the charts by the time the truth is exposed. I really liked Julie, for her go-getter attitude and her refusal to be played a fool. She’s highly relatable, and if I didn’t buy the ending, that’s through no fault of her character.

Lulach, the hero, isn’t quite as well-rounded, but that’s mostly because we only get to see him through Julie’s eyes (barring the very brief prologue). He carries a vibe of too good to be true, but I guess if I was a king in a previous life, I might give that off, too. Still, in contrast with how real Julie seemed, it was a little jarring. In spite of that mild disconnect, though, I was still able to fall for their chemistry.

What wasn’t as easy to accept was the slightly odd ending. It’s an inherent flaw in ghost stories that attempt to be romantic, however, and at least the characters acted intelligently to get to that place. I probably held too high of expectations and was disappointed as a result of that. This is an early work by this author, and I know for a fact she’s grown a lot since this was originally published. Still, it was more enjoyable than a lot of what I’d tried to read lately, with a surprising heat level considering it’s not an erotic romance. That’s down to the characters, and for getting to share that with them, I’m highly grateful.

Readability	8/10 – Dialogue that snaps along, enough description to make it visual…yep, it works for me.
Hero	6/10 – Hunky and adorable if a little too good to be true
Heroine	7/10 – A go-getter with just enough skepticism to make her palatable
Entertainment value	7/10 – I can’t say I really cared for the way it all worked out, but I was wrapped up in the romance of it throughout the entire story
World building	6/10 – The paranormal explanations left a lot to be desired, but the Scottish setting is more than real
TOTAL:	34/50

The Mitchell Money by Sue Fineman

TITLE: The Mitchell Money
AUTHOR: Sue Fineman
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 76k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $6.50

Rachel Woods hasn’t been widowed for long, but she’s already discovered that she didn’t know her husband as well as she thought she did. For starters, he’s made all their money disappear, but when she tries to find out, she hits a blank wall. She’s forced to seek the help out of a young lawyer friend in town, who trades her services as a cook for his ex-cop father’s investigative abilities. Gary Martinson is surly and obnoxious from the moment they meet, but Rachel has little choice but to rely upon his expertise as she tries to ferret out the truth of the life her husband led without her knowledge…

Honestly, the blurb is the most interesting thing about this book. If I’d had another book available to me at the time I was reading this, I wouldn’t have finished it. Extra innings at my daughter’s softball game is the biggest reason I did.

It’s not like there isn’t potentially interesting stuff that happened. Rachel is a forty-five year-old widow who has only just discovered that her husband emptied their bank accounts right before he died suddenly, leaving her in the middle of their house construction with no marketable job skills and a mountain of debt. With nobody else to turn to, she goes to the young lawyer who helped them buy their land. He offers her a job cooking for him and his widower father, and in exchange, his dad, an ex-cop, will do what he can to find her money. It’s the only deal Rachel feels she can get so she accepts. She soon discovers that the surly man she literally ran into in town is the lawyer’s father, but after a rough start, agrees to stay in the agreement. Gary starts digging around and it quickly comes to light that Rachel’s husband was leading a double life. He had a son by another woman, a young teenager who has been living on the streets since his mother died, as well as an entire history Rachel never knew about. Rachel and Gary work together to unravel the truth, and slowly end up building another family in the process.

Sounds like it should be good, doesn’t it? There was so much potential here. Rachel and Gary are an older couple, which always makes for a nice change, and if the living a double life angle is a tad overdone, I thought the second chance at romance approach was a nice way of going about it. It might have been, too, if the prose itself wasn’t so awful. It’s clean enough technically, I suppose, but it’s all telling instead of showing, and the headhopping is insane, often switching perspectives within the same paragraph. Everything that’s wrong with this comes back to its dishwater voice and pedantic presentation:

As the days passed, Johnny and Rachel settled into a routine at the ranch, and the four of them became a family. Johnny worked in the barn or bunkhouse after school, helping Joe get ready to open the ranch for business again. With Gary’s encouragement and Joe’s brotherly love, Johnny thrived. Rachel did her part, too, cooking nutritional meals and reassuring him he’d always have a home with her. She loved the boy as if she’d known him forever.

This is what passes for character development. Instead of showing me how Gary and Rachel manage to get over their antagonism with each other (it just seems to evaporate out of nowhere after being so caustic in the first few chapters, I was convinced they would never work through it), I get this convenient little time jump. There’s also no sense of tension in the external plot, as Gary conveniently removes the obstacles that make it dire for Rachel to find the money. Her need for independence remains, but honestly, most of the time it felt like an excuse to act stubborn rather than organic to any kind of character development.

Simply put, I was bored to tears. The characters were flat, the writing style immature, and the potential lost.

Readability	5/10 – The prose is overly simplistic and pedantic, with too much telling and headhopping
Hero	5/10 – Flat and uninteresting, a victim of the colorless narrative
Heroine	5/10 – She suffers the same fate as the hero
Entertainment value	2/10 – There might have been some good ideas in the basic plot, but I was so bored by halfway through, it didn’t even matter
World building	4/10 – As uninteresting as the rest of the story
TOTAL:	21/50

Hearts in Darkness by Laura Kaye

TITLE: Hearts in Darkness
AUTHOR: Laura Kaye
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novella (roughly 29k)
GENRE: Contemporary romance
COST: $3.75

Makenna James and Caden Grayson have one thing in common on this Friday night – getting stuck in an elevator. Caden’s claustrophobia is only eased by Makenna’s voice, and thus starts an evening of getting to know each other, all without really knowing what the other person looks like…

Sometimes I’m drawn to simple ideas. That doesn’t mean they always work. The premise in this novella is very basic. Two strangers get stuck in an elevator, and with the complete lack of light, they’re forced to get to know each other first through words rather than appearances. Caden is convinced this works in his favor since he’s scarred, inked, and pierced. People are always judging him on his rough appearance. On the other hand, Makenna is used to being one of the guys. Being thought pretty is rarely on her radar. Caden has to fight his claustrophobia, and talking to Makenna helps. Gradually, they get to know about each other and discover they have a lot in common, as well as learn they’re attracted to each other, too, just from the sounds of their voices.

I really liked the idea of this. The notion of a blind attraction appealed to me when I was in need of something sweet and not so superficial, and in some ways, satisfied what I was looking for. It’s not a challenging read in the slightest. Prose is simple, characterizations easy. The author doesn’t have to worry too much about description or scene building since they’re sitting in the dark for a good part of the story. Makenna and Caden are sympathetic protagonists – she’s a tomboyish accountant, he’s a damaged paramedic with anxiety issues – but they felt a little paint-by-numbers for me, never really leaping off the page though there’s certainly nothing wrong with them. Caden fared better, but then I have a soft spot for inked, pierced, damaged men.

Technically speaking, this was another headhopping story and one in which it ended up becoming very obtrusive. The author has a tendency to backtrack a few moments every time she switches heads, which creates this jerky rhythm as I’m forced to re-experience the latest events from the other perspective. This can be done effectively, but not here. It got very annoying the further into the story I got. What I didn’t understand is why the author would headhop all throughout the story, but then, towards the end, have a scene break to show a switch in perspective, complete with scene markers to show it, when that device was never used before in the story. Oddly inconsistent and lowered my opinion of it more because I thought, “Well, someone clearly understands the potential of scene breaks to show POV changes so why the hell didn’t they do it throughout the story?”

Not an awful read by any means. It’s swift and a change of pace from more superficial romances. It just wasn’t great, either.

Readability	6/10 – Headhopping and mild backtracking every time it switches POV annoyed me rather than added to the story
Hero	7/10 – I liked him more for the idea of him rather than actually believing he’s as real as the author might hope
Heroine	6/10 – Attempts to be strong and level-headed but doesn’t always come across that way
Entertainment value	6/10 – Mild escapism. I liked the idea of it, but the execution left me wanting more
World building	6/10 – With two characters trapped in the dark for over half the story, the focus isn’t here
TOTAL:	31/50

Promise Me by Deborah Schneider

TITLE: Promise Me
AUTHOR: Deborah Schneider
PUBLISHER: Wild Rose Press
LENGTH: Novel (roughly 79k)
GENRE: Historical romance
COST: $6.50

Amanda Wainwright promised her husband on his deathbed that she would use his fortune to help out the miners who helped create it for him. The only problem with that is, some of the residents of Willow Creek aren’t too happy about her presence, mainly the other mine owners. They convince Sam Calhoun, the lumberyard owner, to seduce her and then ruin her reputation in hopes of driving her out of town. Sam agrees, but only because he’s working undercover for the Secret Service and he desperately needs to gain the men’s trust in order to find out what he needs to know. Then Amanda actually shows up in town, and all his good intentions go flying out the window…

This book came recommended to me by a romance-reading friend who really enjoyed it, but only showed me we have very different ideas about a strong heroine.

On the surface, the story should be a great fit. It’s a Western historical, which is my preferred type of historical, and tells the story of a strong widow doing good, with a strong man conflicted between his developing feelings for her and the job he must do. Amanda arrives in town, your atypical widow as she was basically given in marriage to a much older man as part of a business arrangement. She’s never known love and considers herself unlovable in a lot of ways since her dead husband didn’t seem all that interested in her sexually. Sam has agreed to seduce her since he’s trying to get in good with the local men in hopes of discovering whether or not they are part of a mining plot, but once he meets her, he’s torn between his attraction to her and what his job demands. They strike a lot of sparks, and in fact, for the first half of the book, I was actually excited about the chemistry between the two.

Then they hit their first big relationship problem. And Amanda went from being this strong, independent woman, to a vengeful child throwing the worst tantrum ever. She even characterizes her actions like that. And my respect for her flew out the window.

It’s an issue of trust at that point, to be honest. Sam had been lying to her from the start, she found out about some of it, and everything hit the fan. But what my friend saw as strong and independent, I saw as bitchy and unnecessary, because she ultimately refused to act like a grown-up about any of it – so contrary to all of her actions previously – and instead pouted and sulked and did the silent treatment for days afterward. When they start to regain ground, it began a cycle of I want you/I can’t trust you/I want you/I can’t trust you, with the back and forth, and leaving and going, and I just wanted to scream by the time I got to the end of it.

There wasn’t even the promise of Sam’s assignment to really provide more meat to the story. Except for what he needed at the beginning, and then providing fodder for the climax, it’s never really explored much, leaving the bulk of the story to fall on their love story. Since I couldn’t buy into that after Amanda’s change in personality, I was left with more frustration than any sense of satisfaction. My friend thinks I’m crazy. She thought Amanda’s reaction was perfectly justified. But there’s a difference between justified and out of character. This was a woman who set up her miners’ organization in a brothel. I’m expected to believe she doesn’t have the strength or nerve to face the man she was so mad at for days upon days after their fight? That she feels the need to punish him with her silence? I don’t think so.

Readability	8/10 – Moderately paced, clean prose
Hero	7/10 – Charming, but I didn’t wholly believe in all his angst or back and forth
Heroine	6/10 – I liked her a lot more until her huge temper tantrum in the middle of the book where she acted like a spoiled brat out of the blue
Entertainment value	6/10 – This lost a lot of momentum when Amanda hit her tantrum and thus started the back and forth of yes/no/yes/no that drove me crazy
World building	7/10 – Some nice details, but this felt like it could’ve taken anyplace in the west, not necessarily specifically in Montana
TOTAL:	34/50