Book Review: Tougher than the Rest (MacLarens of Fire Mountain, #1) by Shirleen Davies

THREE STARS

This book was just okay. The story was good, but I wasn’t able to connect with any of the characters. I thought they were one-dimensional and I didn’t care about any of them.

I especially had problems with Niall. I thought he was self-centered, greedy, and a crappy father for not taking his daughter into consideration when he was going to marry a woman for her land and for political gain. He thought he was doing it to better the family. No, he wasn’t. He was in it for personal gain. No other reason. I saw right through him.

Kate was on her way to California via Arizona to take a job as a teacher when she’s in a stagecoach wreck and loses her memory. Niall rescued her and took her to his family home where he lived with two of his brothers, his aunt, and his daughter. She wore a wedding ring, so thought she was married and soon discovered she could ride a horse well and was able to teach Niall’s daughter some things she would learn in a schoolroom.

I had a big problem with Niall getting with her. He’s a widower and keeps a mistress in town whom he visits every Friday and not for just conversation. He stays in town all day on Saturday, comes home for dinner on Saturday night, then goes for Sunday dinner with this dreadful woman he intends to marry whom his daughter hates and she hates his daughter. But he thinks Kate is pretty and shows up in her room one night after everybody else has gone to bed. He tells her he will never love her, disregards that she may be married, doesn’t care that she is suffering from amnesia, and has sex with her. As far as I was concerned, she was mentally incapacitated and he took advantage of her. I hated him for that, even if she did give her consent. I didn’t like him before because I thought he was mean to her and after he had sex with her, I loathed him and he never made a comeback.

Then Kate turns into a martyr to the point where I thought she was an idiot. I liked her well enough to that point. After that, I didn’t care about her, either.

I didn’t feel the two of them falling in love. There was no chemistry. I was hoping for some sort of interaction between Niall and his daughter. We got a short bit of him taking her to Jocelyn’s house for Sunday dinner and him defending her when Jocelyn wanted to discipline her. I was surprised he did that. It wasn’t going to benefit him.

There were a couple instances of wrong word usage (main instead of mane, imaging instead of imagining) that weren’t serious enough to take away from the reading experience. But Niall ruined this story for me and soured me on the series.

Many will love this book. It just wasn’t for me.

Book Review: The Rescue by Nicholas Sparks

FIVE STARS

Nicholas Sparks books usually have me sobbing and lifting my hands to the heavens and wailing, “Why? Why?” This book did not do that to me and I’m not sure why. Maybe it will come to me as I write this review.

I liked the story. I’ll get that out of the way first. It was angsty with some great characters, a four-year-old child with a learning disability that is not diagnosed, a single mom who is devoted to her child and is frustrated with the doctors and has taken matters into her own hands, and an emotionally broken hero. What wasn’t to like?

Taylor is a contractor and a volunteer fireman. He comes upon a car accident on a stormy night and discovers a wounded woman,, who is frantically screaming for her son who had gotten out of the car after impact and had wandered away. He doesn’t speak well, if at all, and finding him in a swamp in the driving rain in the dark seems impossible. But Taylor is determined to find him and won’t stop until he does. He just hopes it won’t be too late. Despite the fact that there are quite a few people on the search team, minutes turn to hours and it just doesn’t look good for little Kyle.

Denise is Kyle’s mom. She’s devastated by his disappearance and refuses to leave the scene of the accident until he’s found. She’s got a head injury, is bleeding, and needs to go to the hospital. They finally force her into going. Then it’s the waiting game.

Taylor is a kind man with a big heart and a bad case of the Messiah Complex. He thinks he has to save everybody and puts his own life on the line to do it. He’s never been married, has no children of his own, although he is very good to his godchildren–he’s good dad material. The only thing is when he gets too close in a relationship, he buckles. He pulls away and won’t let himself cross that line.

Denise is in love with him. He may not be the prettiest crayon in the box, but he’s helpful, giving, loving, supportive, patient…he’s the perfect man and just the guy she’s been waiting for. Now if only he would see that they’re perfect for each other. Everybody else sees it. Just not him and he’s the one who needs to see it the most.

There were times when I did feel bad for Taylor. He went through some real crap, especially toward the end. His wake-up call was devastating for him. I didn’t wish that on him. I did want to hug him and tell him everything was going to be okay. But it changed him and he needed that in order to move on with his life.

The story had some heart-wrenching moments and, as I mentioned above, I did like it. I guess I just didn’t get as emotionally involved with it like I have with Sparks’ other books.

Still a great read and still deserves five stars.

Book Review: The Widow Vanishes (Heart of Enquiry, #.5) by Grace Callaway

FIVE STARS

For such a short book, it packed a punch! It’s raw, gritty, and steamy with some fantastic characters and a great story.

Annabel is a widow. Her husband had piled up a mountain of debt before he died, leaving her to pay it off. She tried different jobs, but they didn’t pay much and while this debt was outstanding, it was also accruing interest. She was never going to get it paid off. Her last act of desperation was to go to work for the man whom her husband owed. She didn’t want to, but she had no choice. She had to sell her body.

Will McLeod was her first customer. He was given a choice of women from Todd, the pimp, after completing a job for him. He really wasn’t one to take up with prostitutes, but it’d been awhile since he’d been with a woman and he saw no harm in it. Rather than pick the audacious, outspoken women who promised him a night he’d never forget, he chose the quiet one on the end.

It changed their lives forever.

I don’t know what the keywords are that distinguish this novel. I never check that and after reading The Duke Who Knew Too Much, I didn’t bother to read the blurb. This is a love-at-first-sight story, yes, but it’s also a story of love, loyalty, and sacrifice. I don’t usually get this much satisfaction from a novella, but this had it all.

*This is the first book of the Heart of Enquiry series and can be read independently, but we are introduced to Alaric and his cool ways of doing things. You don’t have to read this first to enjoy The Duke Who Knew Too Much.

Book Review: The Baron Without Blame (The Prestons, #.5) by Katherine Grant

FOUR STARS

I didn’t love this book, but I didn’t hate it, either. I liked the premise of the story; a forced marriage, but I wasn’t too crazy about how it all came together.

Lolly and Martin are at a ball. She’s got allergies and is out on the balcony, sneezing when she gets her skirt caught in an iron rail. Martin didn’t know anybody was out there until he heard the sneezing and wasn’t even sure it was a woman. It was dark and neither could see the other, but he soon found out she was female and was in a predicament with her skirts. As he is helping her, the town gossip catches them in a “compromising” position and makes a big deal out of it. Thus the forced marriage.

Martin was a man of high morals and strove to do the right thing at all costs, but he didn’t know this lady and didn’t even know her name or which woman of three he was to marry when he showed up at Lolly’s house the next day. He made an offer. Her father accepted. She did not. But he has a plan she does agree to.

Okay this is where things kind of fell apart for me. I get that Martin has a social conscience that nobody agrees with. She has some of her own ideas that coincide with his. I admire that and was glad that they were agents of change. What didn’t hit with me is the way she lorded over Martin. She was allegedly a virgin (she was in the story), but knew waaaay too much for pulling that off. She thought her father was manipulating her. I thought she was manipulating Martin and I didn’t like her for it. She demands sex from him to see if she wants to marry him or go on with her life in Boston. Seriously? She was basing her decision on whether or not he was good in bed? I was really turned off by that.

But as things go, they do fall in love and the rest is history. I did like the epilogue and I liked the excerpt from the next book in the series. I will probably come back to this in the future, despite my dislike for Lolly.

By the way, if you haven’t subscribed to the author’s newsletter, you’re missing out. She does deep research on various topics and sends out her discoveries to her subscribers. It’s really interesting, if you like the history behind some of these historical romances.

Book Review: The Duke Who Knew Too Much (Heart of Enquiry, #1) by Grace Callaway

FIVE STARS

Inquiring minds want to know. Emma Kent wants to be an investigator in her brother’s investigation firm. She already does some work there, but it’s piddly and she wants to do something important. She knows she’s got what it takes to be an investigator, but she’s a woman and female investigators are unheard of. But she soon finds herself accusing a duke of murder after his lover was found dead in his cottage. She’d happed upon the two in a game of seduction that involved bondage and his lover begging him. The duke is into BDSM as his lover and Emma misunderstood it until days later he educates her in the most diabolical of ways.

Alaric McLeod is the Duke of Strathaven. He’s got a rough past that has left him jaded and even broken. He hides it all so well, but he’s got vulnerabilities that seep through. He comes across as cold-hearted and unfeeling. He shows no regrets for anything when he’s actually a closet emotional wreck. His facade was so good, he believed it himself.

But he wasn’t fooling Emma for a minute. She knew he wasn’t like other men, but she also recognized that he was very human and needed what we all need; to love, be loved, and to be accepted.

This was off the charts in the steam department, but there was a great mystery to it, too. Attempts had been made on Alaric’s life, which drew Emma close to him as she tried to investigate on her own. She’d been wrong about him at first and would risk everything to save him.

This was a great whodunnit that didn’t overpower the romance between Emma and Alaric. I particularly enjoyed the camaraderie between Alaric and his brother, Will, Ambrose Kent (Emma’s brother) and Emma, too. How they captured the culprits was so good and the ending knocked my socks off.

Great read.

*I read book The Lady Who Came in from the Cold (Book 3 of the series) a year ago. Apparently, the series can be read out of order and the novels can be stand-alones, but there was an excerpt from the next book at the end of this one and Emma and Alaric are in it. I’m in!