Janis Reams Hudson

I loved this book about an ex con coming home after seven years in prison. I thought the emotions were genuine and the characters full and well rounded. The heroine was struggling to keep her farm afloat while her grandfather was in the hospital. The farm in question was the hero's family farm which had had to be sold after he went to prison and his mother was in a car accident. Now the hero has come back to his small hometown because his mother is in a nursing home here and he eventually wants to get his farm back.

There was POV from both the hero and the heroine. I loved feisty tough talking heroine and the quiet steady hero. Here the hero was not sent away for a crime he didn't commit but for manslaughter after a fight led to someone dying. He suffers a lot of guilt over it and feels unworthy of the heroine.

A totally sweet well written love story.… (mer)

This had the potential for plenty of emotion and drama, however, every issue resolved too easily and falling in love happened so so quickly in circumstances that should have overflowed with reluctance.

Amy shows up on the doorstep of her deceased best friend’s husband to tell him how his wife died as a member of the national guard the previous year and she’s also there to deliver some Christmas gifts the wife prepped for their three daughters.

Riley and his daughters welcome Amy into their lives with open arms, which felt a little off to me, not one of the girls questioned this woman basically taking their mom’s place, and Riley had been in love with his wife since childhood, he hadn’t been with any other woman, I just felt like embarking on a new relationship should have been much more fraught and hesitant for him.

The only person who doesn’t welcome Amy is Riley’s caricature of a mother-in-law who has antiquated notions of femininity and unfortunately the friction between her and Amy is ironed out in a way that I found disappointing and contrary to the person Amy professed to be, and unfortunately, it underscored the overall feeling that Amy was squeezing herself into every aspect of her best friend’s old life.

I also could not get into the romance between Amy and Riley. I don’t know whether it was the chemistry feeling forced with so much emphasis on prolonged stares they share or the fact that they barely know each other before their “happily ever after” (for example, they go on exactly one date, and the Christmas gift Riley gives Amy, much like the resolution to Amy’s issues with the mother-in-law, doesn’t remotely jibe with the woman the author has described Amy as). There’s also the problem that Amy has moved to her best friend’s home town, taken a job with her best friend’s husband, bonded with the best friend’s kids and the best friend’s mom. Amy isn’t a stalker, it’s clear she’s genuine, yet there’s still something very uncomfortable in the way that she inserts herself into her deceased friend’s world.

I can’t help wondering if the book had explored who Amy is more, gone deeper with the story of her unstable childhood, gone deeper with how it felt to have survived that firefight while witnessing her best friend give up her life for her, gone deeper as far as her post military life is concerned, rather than her easily landing a job with Riley, show her struggling, show her trying to figure out what to do, so that maybe her immediately clinging to someone else’s family might have felt a bit more worthy of empathy rather than like she was violating the friend code.… (mer)

Angela's family is moving from Memphis to Tuscan to start a new life. Matt was raised with the Apache and is working with them and the American government on a peace treaty. Matt and Angela cross paths due to some Apache idiocy. In order to keep the peace, Matt and Angela have to marry. It's supposed to be temporary, but feelings happen to get in the way.

The book started out OK, but Angela was just plain stupid throughout most of the story. I felt so sorry for Matt. She put that man through the ringer with her insecurities and jealousy and he still wanted her! He never gave her any reason to doubt him, but because of the nature of their marriage, I guess it made it hard for her to trust him. The last 50 or so pages of the book were hard to finish because I just wanted to ring her neck.… (mer)