This HaBO is from Carol, who is search for a Western romance from the 90s:
I’m looking for a book that my pre-teen self started reading before my mother discovered what I had checked out from the library and confiscated it. This would have been in the early 1990’s when either Western ranch romances became really popular, or the librarian in Orange County Libraries in Florida was a big Western romance fan, because all of the romance section bookshelves featured horses and cowboy hats.
I only made it through the first few chapters of the forbidden book, but I really would like to read the ending. The story involved a young woman who lived on a ranch with her recently widowed stepmother. The heroine and stepmother didn’t get along though I don’t think that this stepmother was evil. I think that she was closer in age to the heroine than to the heroine’s deceased father. The stepmother, having a hard time dealing with the ranch and her wild stepdaughter, asked her brother to join them.
The hero already disliked the heroine because she was giving his sister a hard time and thought that she was running wild (which she kinda was). The heroine was a brat, but because she was chafing over her new stepmother trying to tell her what to do.
At some point, the heroine sneaked away with a boy neighbor and the hero found them making out in a river or pond or some sort of body of water. He dragged her away and kinda slut shamed her, not realizing that he interrupted the heroine trying to push off the neighbor boy who needed to learn a thing or two about consent.
And that is when my mother ended the story. I remember one more detail. The hero, despite despising the heroine, spent a good deal of time fantasizing whether her thighs were huge and muscular from riding horses all day. Of course they were slim and shapely, but I might have liked it more if the heroine was built like Xena.
In my head, I’ve changed the lyrics of “Moves Like Jagger” to “Thighs Like Xena.” Which is definitely an improvement.
I think every Nineties western romance had a Hero Rescues Heroine From Sexual Assault And Calls Her A Whore scene. Might be why I never took to cowboys.
Was this historical or contemporary? It’s dinging couple of Johanna Lindsey bells, but obviously not applicable if the hero’s other horse was a truck.
I don’t know the title, but I want to read this too! Great description. 🙂
I……. didn’t think I wanted to know what this is, but I do. I do so much.
This is a shot in the dark, but could this be a Diana Palmer? It sounds very Diana Palmer 80s/90s.
Johanna Lindsey? Rebecca Brandywine?
Janelle Taylor – she had a bunch of westerns.
I agree with you Jill Q. Diana Palmer was my first thought. I stopped reading her books before any of the other old school romances because I just could not take that BS anymore.
Johanna Lindsey Brave the Wild Wind?
Another vote for Diana Palmer. I’m sure I’ve read this.
If it’s a Johanna Lindsey, it’s probably Brave the Wild Wind, but I don’t think it quite fits.
It’s been awhile, but I think the encounter the hero interrupts between the heroine and whoever was consensual. It does have a bunch of crazysauce though. I know they end up in Spain, complete with bullfighting… somehow.
I find it funny that so many readers have had their romance novels confiscated when they were teens when my mother, who was super strict on everything else, let my sister read them when she was 12. I think mainly it’s because she was reading them at that age also. She and my godmother called my oldest sister a late start since she didn’t start reading them until she was 18. My mother’s only rule was to not read a new book before she got to read it. Though of course sometimes my sister would start one unaware that my mother hadn’t read it yet. And my mother would wait for her to finish, although she complained the whole time.
Okay end rant.
Could this be Diana Palmer’s “Heartless”? It matches some details but not the others; there is a step sibling romance, love-hate sexual tension but the heroine’s mother marries the “hero’s” father so there is no stepmother involved. I grabbed a synopsis just in case it rings any bells.
A handsome rancher-tycoon and his shy, sheltered stepsister fall in love in Palmer’s latest romance. Gracie and Jason Pendleton share no bloodlines, but they’ve been close ever since Gracie came to live with her now-deceased mother, Beverly, who married Jason’s cruel (and also now dead) father, Myron.
Jason is a good ol’ boy who prefers his Rocking Spur ranch to the family mansion old-fashioned Gracie tends to. Gracie, meanwhile, harbors a dark secret that has made her frightened of romance even though she’s desired Jason for years. The feeling’s mutual, and, eventually, their hearts collide despite the interference of Kittie Sartain, a bitchy redhead supermodel who tries to lasso Jason.
I’ve never read cowboy romances but my best friend does so I’ll ask her, I’m intrigued to see how deep this rabbit hole goes…
It was not Brave the Wild Wind. The ‘hero’ fits the typical Diana Palmer typecast, but DP’s heroines tend to be naive to the point of stupidity while I think that this heroine was bratty but not naive.
All these years later, I would like to know how it all ended up. I assume that the two got married and lived HEA but I hope that the heroine kept her sass to the end.
Oh, one more thing. Another reason I doubt it it Diana Palmer is bc her books tended to have really lame covers and the cover of the book I checked out was more Johanna Lindsey style, with a couple in some type of a hot embrace.
Well, drat. I looked up the entire collections of Diana Palmer, Rebecca Brandewyne, and Janelle Taylor but none of the books sounds right. Any other authors to try?
Linda Lael Miller?
@Rammy, my parents so didn’t care what I was reading, as long as I was reading. I had read YA with romance elements, but my first “explicit” novel was actually Jean Auel’s Clan series, lol. Something neither of my parents would ever read. My first true romance was “Seduced” by Pamela Britton, at like 13…again clearly my parents didn’t care with a title like that.
But clearly I’ll have to make my own boundaries when I have kids, hoarding new ones until I’ve read them sounds like a good idea. 🙂
Jennifer Blake has some old-school westerns…?
Joan Johnston?
@Olivia, yea I’m sure I inherited my love of reading from her. And she always encouraged me to read, but I have to admit those Harlequins from the 70s and 80s put me off Romance novels. So compared to my sisters I’m an extremely late start.
Not Jenniferr Blake, though, I constantly re-read her and this is not one of hers.
Everything doesn’t match up but it reminds me a lot of Linda Howard’s Against the Rules.
Contemporary? Remember anything about the cover? Likely to be a Harlequin style or a thicker book? What state it took place in?
Um, I’m a little obsessed.
I wish I could recall more. The cover artwork was reminiscent of Johanna Lindsey or Catherine Anderson. It featured a strawberry blond or red headed heroine in a partially removed white blouse (unfortunately this hardly narrows it down since every other heroine had a gaping white blouse). She and the hero were reclined. I have no idea the location other than a ranch.
I have no helpful comments, I just want to know what this book is. I like a throwback Western. Anyone have any recommendations for wagon train westerns?