TEST
Untamed is the second book in Merline Lovelace’s series about the history of Oklahoma. It takes place in the early 1800s, back when the territory was still known as Indian Country. It certainly has a distinct sense of place. It’s also a flat, uninvolving and often annoying read.
Lady Barbara Chamberlain comes to Indian Country with ulterior motives. She was raised by her brother Harry, with the two of them pulling cons all over Europe to support themselves. After his most recent scam, Harry was sentenced to ten years of hard labor in Bermuda. Barbara knows Harry will never make it that long. In order to raise the funds to free him, she plans to use a stolen document that proves a wealthy American heiress wasn’t legally married to her husband, and shouldn’t have inherited his fortune. Barbara will claim to be the man’s long-lost relative and rightful heir, demanding the money that is “rightfully hers.”
She doesn’t expect to find the woman is no weak-minded pushover, or that her son is an Army Ranger. Lieutenant Zachariah Morgan is instantly attracted to the beautiful Englishwoman. He takes her to his family’s home and introduces her to his big, loving, only-in-a-romance- novel family. But then he learns the truth about Barbara, and she must decide how far she’s willing to go to save her brother.
The book gets off to a respectable start and slowly goes downhill from there. The problem is there’s enough plot here for one of those big sweeping historical epics, except the book’s only 295 pages. Something had to go, and that something is the character development and most of the romance. The love story is rushed and unconvincing. They move from kissing to sex so quickly that it seems utterly without motivation. Instead of developing the initial attraction, the author sends the hero off to do some of his army duties, separating the characters and depriving their relationship of the time it desperately needed. There’s really no chemistry between the characters, so it’s hard to become involved in the romance.
I don’t think there’s an interesting character in the book. Zach and Barbara are both flat and one-note. You’d think that a heroine who is a con artist would have to be somewhat complex to explain why she does the things she does while still making her sympathetic. There’s too little to Barbara to make much of an impression either way. She’s just a placeholder in the plot. Zach is mostly irritating. His behavior toward Barbara is high-handed from the start, and I don’t think there was a single moment I liked him. Putting them together was about as appealing as listening to fingernails being scraped across a chalkboard. It gave me that uncomfortable feeling.
Most of the characters are annoying, except for the villain, who is so eeeeevil, scheming, and over-the-top that it’s truly unbearable, and not in a good way. The villain’s comeuppance made me sigh with relief that I’d finally seen the end of the character, but it still wasn’t nearly sweet enough to redeem the author for punishing me into reading such stupid antics.
The book does have a respectable amount of period detail, as the author explains the sensitive situation between the Americans and the Indians they were trying to push around. (Although having President Andrew Jackson, the person heading the Indian Removal program, show up in person wasn’t the best move. This book did not need another unlikable character.) For a historical romance, it at least gets half of the format right. There’s plenty of action, and it moves quickly enough, zipping along to get all the plot points in, right up to its abrupt ending.
Untamed either needed more room to develop the story more or better characters to make it worth the reader’s time. It is not poorly written. But the undeveloped and annoying characters prevent it from being anything close to a good read.
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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.