This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Elizabeth W. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

Here is Elizabeth W.'s review:

Reading the description of the book, I really wanted to like it.  We’ve got a heroine, Becky, who’s a survivor.  Growing up was tough after her father and brother die, leaving her mother and her to scrape by.   When she finds herself pregnant, her boyfriend, Dylan, demands she terminate and when she refuses he accidentally runs over a homeless person. He lands in jail after she calls the police, and as the story begins the ex-boyfriend is out of jail and mad is hell.

Our hero, Logan Knight, is a former soldier who still suffers PTSD from a horrifying incident in which he failed to save a group of school girls.  He’s moved back to Texas and wants to open a ranch where other returning soldiers can recover from PTSD.  The problem is that his father, an insanely patriarchal patriarch, insists he takes over the family ranch and will only allow him the land if he is married.  Coincidentally, Becky needs a place to live as she hides from Dylan who is trying to gain custody of their daughter to spite Becky.

Apart from the somewhat crazy demands of the father, this plot has the potential for a good story with the emotional development of these two characters.   So much potential unrealized.

Instead of looking at the plot, maybe I should have just looked at the title.  The words “her . . . hero” should have been the dead giveaway that even though Becky’s a survivor, she apparently needs a man to protect her.   I assume there are readers out there who enjoy a damsel in distress being rescued, but it drove me crazy that the main conflict in this book revolved around whether Logan could recover from his experiences enough to protect Becky.  I’ll admit I’ve discovered my own bias after reading several books in a row from different time periods where the man’s ability to protect the woman is a key element of the story.   I much prefer my romances where a couple recognizes their interdependence rather than focusing on the man protecting the woman.

Even putting the whole “can I protect her” aspect of Logan’s recovery aside, the book gave short shrift to how he faced his demons.   Having read other books about returning war heroes (Karina Bliss books come to mind), his recovery just seemed too simplistic.

Finally, even if I could get beyond the whole hero thing and the simplistic PTSD recovery, the character’s internal and external dialogue which was often choppy, simplistic, or repetitious; the unclear point-of-view shifts, and the oversimplified stock nature of most characters drove me crazy.

I could go on and detail more aspects I didn’t like or provide egregious dialogue examples, but I won’t.  You get the picture. I disliked this book and would have DNF’d it after the first two chapters if I hadn’t already promised I’d review it.   There are people out there who may like this book – otherwise it would not have been nominated, but it drove me crazy.  If you want to read a book or two about returning soldiers, go read Karina Bliss’s Special Forces series.  You’ll be glad you did.