C
Genre: Historical: American, Western, Romance
This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Lauralou. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Historical category.
The summary:
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE…
If there’s one thing Ivy Powell hates it’s accepting help! But after receiving menacing threats she’s left with no choice but to make a proposition to a ruggedly handsome cowboy. The only problem is Ivy’s first marriage destroyed her trust in men, and walking down the aisle again isn’t something she’ll undertake lightly….
When Gideon Black is asked to protect Ivy, he knows he can’t refuse his friend’s request. And yet she makes him desire things he never even knew he wanted! But Gideon has hidden his dark past from Ivy. When the truth comes to light, will their hasty marriage vows be enough to keep them together?
Here is Lauralou's review:
This is not the worst book I’ve ever read, but it’s tedious and cliched. We open on a dark and stormy night. Widowed Ivy Powell is watching the weather with her rifle close at hand, ruminating on some recent “troubles.” Suddenly, a shadowy figure appears on her porch. It’s Gideon Black, a “giant of a man” with a “hard jaw and glittering eyes.” Ivy’s brother (who has an injury that prevents him from assisting personally) has sent Gideon to protect her.
Ivy’s troubles turn out to be a series of elaborate and improbable threatening gestures perpetrated against her by a mysterious villain. She has been receiving “anonymous poems” (no further information given) and sketches of her property. Every time she receives a sketch, it’s a closer and closer view of her house, culminating in an intimate view of her bedroom. This is something a modern-day movie stalker would do, but with photographs, which would make a ton more sense. Instead, we get the old-timey frontier version, in which the villain somehow painstakingly sketches closer and closer views of Ivy’s house without her noticing. Nope…doesn’t work for me.
In addition to these rather restrained activities, the villain has killed one of Ivy’s horses and her beloved dog, Tug. These events are treated almost as asides. Ivy cries rote tears for Tug, then buries him and moves on to other concerns, such as how hot Gideon is. I’m admittedly very sensitive about this sort of thing, but I’m sure I’m not the only one. (Note that this all happens very early in the book to lay the backdrop for why she needs Gideon’s help–not a spoiler.)
Ivy and Gideon immediately succumb to extremely unoriginal lustful thoughts about each other. For example:
“She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her features were strong yet undeniably feminine. A stubborn jaw set off by a pair of plump pink lips, delicate winged eyebrows over shrewd midnight eyes. Lush breasts, gently flared hips.”
I’m always annoyed when an author has to qualify a term like “strong” by reassuring us that the heroine is still feminine. Throw in the most cliched descriptors for a purty lady ever used and I’m yawning and rolling my eyes at the same time.
In addition to scrupulously not acting on their lust, Ivy and Gideon do some Nancy Drew-style detective work to find the villain–by matching shoe prints and balancing a twig precariously across the path they think the villain will use, etc. In some places it reads like a procedural. To add to the tedium, every time the book switches between Ivy and Gideon’s point of view, it recaps everything that just happened through the other person’s eyes. This is a fairly common device, but it’s only worth doing if it provides new information. In this book, it largely serves as an opportunity for them to have more (boring) lustful thoughts.
Good things about the book–Ivy is an independent female character with bravery and business savvy. She doesn’t step aside while Gideon hunts the bad guy–the two of them work consistently as a team. Also, the author clearly knows her history and setting. It was interesting to learn that private homes once provided meals and accommodation to travelers on the stagecoach line.
In conclusion, it wasn’t terrible, but I doubt I would have finished reading it if I weren’t responsible for reviewing it.
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I despise “plump” used as a descriptor in this way. Ugh!
Once I know an animal died in the book, I’m likely to not read it. Perhaps having me watch Where the Red Fern Grows in 2nd grade with my whole school affected me for life, IDK, but big trigger for me.
@Kelly:
Oh, me too. One of my biggest.