Review: HEART OF A TEXAN by Leigh Greenwood

Leigh Greenwood gives us another of his rip-roaring, fast-paced, high adventure Western romances in Heart of a Texan, the latest and last of his Night Riders series.

The night when bandits attack her farm and kill her father, Roberta shoots one of the men. Trouble is, Nate isn’t a raider. A guilty Roberta reluctantly nurses Nate, one of the despised ranchers whom she’s convinced are responsible, back to health. As they talk, she comes to realize he may be different from his comrades.

Nate rode over to help Roberta and her father and got a bullet hole in his chest as a reward. He’s spent the past two years in an obsessive but fruitless search for the villain who killed his brother. The enforced inaction and his conversational sparring with the lovely Roberta, who’s determined to keep her farm going, has him thinking maybe the time has arrived for a change.

Interweaving action, suspense and romance, Heart of a Texan has you frantically turning pages to find out how Roberta’s and Nate’s romance plays out against a background of multiple disasters that seem bent on cleaving them apart.

While the action is fast and furious, the changes in the characters are just as momentous. I don’t care for tortured heroes, especially ones who make everyone else’s life wretched. I like even less the doormat heroines who let them get away with their infantile behavior. Although Nate has his demons, he’s not one who expects anyone else to lie down before his misery. Roberta wouldn’t do it anyway. While she acknowledges his pain, she doesn’t cater to it, but, with gentle common sense, urges him to let his futile endeavor go. While Roberta at first leans on others, she learns to stand up for herself, which is not an easy task in a society that treats women like brainless idiots. She also comes to realize the error of lumping everyone together.

With an admirable hero and heroine and a delicious romance unfurling against a life-and-death background, Heart of a Texan has it all.

Thank you all,
Linda
ARC provided by Sourcebooks

Review: Texas Pride by Leigh Greenwood

Penniless nobility, female ranchers, treachery, action, and loads of romance set in 1870’s Texas--Texas Pride has it all.

Impoverished Polish prince Ivan came to America ten years ago to seek his fortune. What he found were the privations of war as a soldier, backbreaking work as a cowhand, and betrayal from someone he thought a friend. When that same false friend offers him half a ranch he won in a card game if Ivan works it for a year, he is understandably wary. But selling his half of the ranch will net him enough money to return to Poland. And the ranch’s other owner is a woman beautiful enough to make a man forget his homeland. But is everything as it seems?

Furious at her younger brother for losing his share of their ranch, Carla must now deal with this usurper. She wants to hate him, but she can’t. He’s handsome, kind and able to pull his weight as a cowhand. Even better, he likes her as the feisty female she is and doesn’t want her to change, as every other man does.

Generally, westerns are not my first choice of romance. I prefer my historicals set on foreign shores. I also don’t usually read romances written by male authors. Men tend to make the hero a superman and the heroine a simpering idiot who blindly worships the god-like male. Ugh.

But not Mr. Greenwood. His Texas Pride contains all the elements I like--a story with action and mystery, a hero and heroine I love, and tons of romance. Ivan is heroic, but Carla matches him in gumption and intelligence. A true partnership, not a master and slave. And their romance is scrumptious.

Ivan is my favorite type of hero, the honorable man. I especially like honorable men who make their own way. Even better are honorable men who face treachery and come through the experience even better men. And he’s blond (I love blond heroes) and gorgeous, too. What’s not to like?

Carla is my favorite kind of heroine. I like a heroine who fights against the artificial constraints imposed by the male establishment and wins. I like even more a male author who writes with approval of such a woman. Good for you, Mr. Greenwood. I wish you loads of success.

Texas Pride has everything I love in a romance. Enjoy.

Thank you all,
Linda
ARC provided by Sourcebooks

Review: TEARS OF GOLD by Laurie McBain

Sweeping from London to the ranchos of Spanish California, gold rush San Francisco, and antebellum Louisiana, Laurie McBain's Tears of Gold plunges headlong on a vivid, heart-pounding story of love, adventure, deceit and mystery.

Mara will never end up like her mother, the cast-off mistress of a rich man. Mara spurns men first—until a young London suitor shoots himself after her rejection. The young man's uncle, Nicholas, vows revenge on the villain who hurt his nephew.

Not knowing the young man's fate, Mara, along with her con-artist brother and his son, leave London for the gold fields of California. Mara masquerades as a California ranchero's long lost niece as she reluctantly becomes part of her brother's latest scheme. Here Nicholas first encounters her, unaware she is the woman who rejected his nephew. Thus begins Nicholas's fascination with the beautiful and enigmatic Mara. When he discovers her identity, he smothers his growing admiration for her with contempt. The attraction is mutual, and Mara also fails to keep her distance, even as she knows she should.

Tears of Gold is big story in every sense of the word--historic events, life-and-death consequences, and dramatic settings. Today the book would be a series, with each of the three major locations, all full of historic and descriptive detail, a separate connected novel. The story itself is a wider-ranging, mid-nineteenth century version of Pride and Prejudice, although I found the leads less appealing. Ignoring the introduction of new information, Nicholas continually mistreats Mara, his prejudice blaming her for something that was not her fault. Mara is strong and independent, but her too-strong pride prevents her from explaining her side, and she makes excuse after excuse for Nicholas's continued ill-usage.

Despite the hero's and heroine's shortcomings, I enjoyed this big, sprawling, complex novel. If you also long for stories like this that no one writes any more, Tears of Gold, published in 1979, is the book for you.

Thank you all,
Linda
ARC provided by Sourcebooks