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Overall rating: 4 stars (out of 5)

Things I looked at:

Readability: how well was it written/edited. Did it flow well?

Story line: Did it catch and keep my attention?

Characters: Were they interesting and well developed?

Period accuracy: If historical, was the period obvious from setting descriptions, and were the period details accurate?

The latest book to come across my reading list was a hit, so I thought I’d let you know all about it 🙂 I’ll kick things off with a copy of the blurb, then get straight into what I thought was great and what maybe wasn’t.

What It’s About

On the run from her ex-lover…

Jilted by a no-show husband…

And now mistaken for a whore in the Diamond Back Saloon…

Abigail Thornton doesn’t think things can get any worse. That is until a single slap to a man’s face starts a barroom brawl that lands her in the last place she expected to be.

Town Marshal Morgan Avery wants nothing more than to wash away the trail-dust and sleep for a week, preferably with a soft, willing woman by his side. Instead, he gets Abigail Thornton – all one hundred pounds of her thrust at him seconds before a fist connects with his face. Breaking up the fight takes more effort than he wants to admit and when the last man falls he finds Abigail still standing and not looking the least bit contrite.

Throwing her into the town jail for the night would salve his wounded pride and then he will let her go. Or that was the plan. When morning comes he finds himself oddly reluctant to do so. Miss Thornton is hiding something and he aims to find out what, even if he has to bed her to do so. But will one night in her bed be enough?

What I loved about this book

This story had a great plot and well rounded characters. There was some action and intrigue, which I always like, and the heroine was very unconventional. I found that interesting. In romance, and especially in historicals, it’s difficult to cultivate a heroine that modern readers can relate to. If we strictly follow the social norms and rules of the day, she can turn out very bland. Abigail in this story is definitely not bland!

Our main characters face deep emotions and having to relate to and understand each other despite difficult pasts and given the fact that they barely know each other but quickly fall deeply in love. The poignancy of the situations as they came up was well done.

What I didn’t

My only pet peeve in this story was some of the language. If you’re a reader of mine, you know I dislike the more vulgar/harsh profanity that’s become common in contemporary romances, and apparently in historicals as well. I won’t ding the book too harshly for it because it was really only two or three instances, and I understand this point is a personal preference.

One thing I was on the fence about was the same thing that made the story intriguing to begin with, and that’s the unconventional heroine. She’s not your typical blushing virgin, she’s seen some of the worse sides of life and doesn’t necessarily hide it. It was hard for me to get my head around a very contemporary character in a historical. It’s not that her situation isn’t historically accurate, but because it’s not what I’m used to reading there was a bit of a barrier there that distracted me. If you can get past that, though, it’s a great read.

Conclusions

I decided to read this book because of an author group I’m in and went into it a little skeptical because of the previous western I’d read and been disappointed with. This one restored my faith in my genre, and I’ll definitely be keeping Lily Graison and her Willow Creek series in mind for future reading.