TEST
Geralyn Dawson has written another funny western featuring the McBride Menaces – aka the McBride Blessings. This time around they are in their Uncle Tye’s care while their father and stepmother are on honeymoon.
His nieces have Tye pretty much wrapped around their fingers. Tye meets baker Claire Donovan when he mistakenly thinks she has cooked a runaway puppy he had gotten for the girls. What Claire was really baking was Magic, the secret ingredient in all her recipes. Claire has come to Fort Worth to get away from her family and escape her own bad luck legend. There was a tradition in her hometown: a wedding cake baked with Magic guaranteed the couple an extra dose of happiness and prosperity. When Claire ran away on her own wedding day, the tradition suddenly became null and void.
In this marriage-of-convenience story, Tye and Claire end up married so she can keep her new bakery and dispel the bad luck myth, and so Tye can retain custody of the Blessings when their parents’ ship is lost at sea.
Tye is reluctant to trust Claire because he believes Magic is an aphrodisiac, and because of a woman in his past. It may just be a mood I’m in, but the man blaming all women for the acts of one evil woman is getting on my nerves. I wanted to smack him for refusing to acknowledge what he clearly felt for Claire and for holding her Magic against her. He went way too far with the superstition about Magic. But I did so like Tye’s wry sense of humor. And, the poor guy had to put up with women all over town chasing him when they found out he held an English title.
Claire was independent until, like so many of the rest of us, it came to her family. They found where she had been hiding, showed up, and then pretty much took over. She was smart enough to come up with a way to get what she wanted, and make her family realize how they’d been treating her, too. She was also a great stand-in mom to the Blessings.
Now, the Blessings are a main part of the story. They cause trouble and create general havoc everywhere they go. They try to set up Tye with a woman they heard their father mention in passing, despite the fact that Tye has no interest in her. If you don’t like kids as a major part of the story, this book is not for you. I was ready for them, though, and I thought they were generally pretty cute (if a little devious).
Dawson wrapped up this book nicely with the reappearance of the Blessings’ parents and the dawning of Tye’s realizations about life and love. If you liked her previous book, The Bad Luck Wedding Dress, and enjoy westerns with humor, you’ll enjoy biting into The Bad Luck Wedding Cake
.Grade: B
Book Type: Frontier/Western Hist Romance
Sensuality: Subtle
Review Date: 31/07/98
Publication Date: 1998
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Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.