TEST
You know you’re in the hands of a master when you part the covers of a Beverly Jenkins book. Wild Rain is no exception to that rule, providing us with a wonderful romance worth falling into impassioned love with.
Spring Lee is a self-possessed woman who lives on her own terms on her own land, ranching on a plot neighboring that of her doctor brother and his bride (see book three in Jenkins’ Old West series, Tempest). She is perfectly content with her life and sees no need to add a husband or family to it.
Reporter Garrett McCray is hoping to shadow Colton Lee for an article he’s writing on Black doctors practicing out west for the Washington, D.C.-based Washington Wasp. While riding in to interview Colton, he’s thrown from his horse and stuck in the middle of a blizzard with an injured knee. Spring spies him on her way home and offers him a ride to safety in her cabin. She offers him medicinal tea – he heats stew for them to eat. His reporter’s curiosity bemuses her, and he is fascinated by her directness. The banter begins. Spring likes pants, her horses, and plain talk; Garrett has never met a woman like her before. He’s soon as fascinated with Spring as he is with his article’s subject, and Spring begins to warm to Garrett’s honest curiosity and gentle ways.
But as Spring and Garrett get closer, complications arise. Spring must come to grips with her grandfather’s impending death – and the awful and understandable reason why they have been estranged for so many years. Garrett, too, must grapple with the fact that he has a job back east –and that he and Spring might, in the end, want different things from life.
Jenkins never hesitates to give the reader just what they want and Wild Rain is a perfect, touching and romantic tale.
Spring is a wonderful heroine, self-reliant, with a dry sense of wit that is very appealing. Her independence has its basis in a heartbreaking reason, but Garrett helps to heal her heart.
Garrett is sweet, and even more importantly, he has the curiosity and instincts of a reporter. So many authors forget to make their reporter characters sound like actual journalists who are interested in people or places or events, but Jenkins does that brilliantly.
The romance builds slowly and sweetly between them, with Garrett patiently convincing Spring to open up, while Spring’s unique ways charm Garrett utterly. They make adult choices and slowly open up to each other.
You know you’re in for impeccable research when you read a Jenkins romance, and her portrayal of the rise of Jim Crow in Wyoming and the aftermath of native tribes being driven off their land and into reservations is outstanding. The period and flavor of the era is fully intact.
An excellent romance with a wonderful and memorable heroine, Wild Rain gets my highest recommendation.
You can read our other review of this title HERE.
Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer
Visit our Amazon Storefront
Grade: A
Book Type: American Historical Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 07/02/21
Publication Date: 02/2021
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.
Lisa Fernandes is a writer, reviewer and recapper who lives somewhere on the East Coast. Formerly employed by Firefox.org and Next Projection, she also currently contributes to Women Write About Comics. Read her blog at http://thatbouviergirl.blogspot.com/, follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/thatbouviergirl or contribute to her Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/MissyvsEvilDead or her Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/missmelbouvier
Related Reviews
So excited to see Beverly Jenkins featured in the New York Times today! I am a big fan and I’m now reading Wild Rain.
That article was excellent!
I just finished reading Wild Rain last night, really enjoyed it, and have some thoughts to share. First, the awesome stuff. Spring is a refreshing, unconventional prickly heroine who really shines as a character in the Wild West. Every time she appeared in the book, I thought, “Seriously, when is this movie coming out?” In other stories, the “not like other girls” trope can feel forced or anachronistically hyper-feminist, but not here. Although an outlier, she feels believable for the time and place. While reading, I kept thinking, “I’m so glad for Spring’s sake that she doesn’t live in stuffy Boston!” Continuing with Spring, I loved her interactions with her horses. Animals in romance can be a risk, running the gamut from being there just to be cute or comic relief to actually feeling integral to the plot. Here, they are fully integrated within the story and highlight a softer side of Spring’s crusty exterior rather than feeling tacked on for cuteness points. I loved all the descriptions of food. In Westerns, you rarely see anybody eat anything besides beans, biscuits, gravy, and bacon. But here, we get descriptions of steak, roast chicken, stew, trout, and I forget what else. It all sounded so delicious! The history, from what little I know about it, is impeccable. As always, Ms. Jenkins did her homework so the reader didn’t have to (not that we shouldn’t follow up and learn more!). She wove a number of fascinating, lesser known historical events into the story without info dumping. Sundown papers? The Union Navy off the coast of France? Freeborn black men being given preference for hotel doorman positions over former slaves? I felt like I was reading a fun history lesson blended into a cool story. Of course, I would expect no less. :-) Despite all this well-deserved praise, there is one big issue that would keep me from giving this romance an A-grade: the hero. Don’t get me wrong. I love a good cinnamon roll hero, and Garrett is a great one. Romance novels don’t often explore a heroine with more traditionally masculine energy paired with a hero with more traditionally feminine energy, so I was really pleased to see that here. The only other example that really stood out to me was Cat Sebastian’s A Duke in Disguise. But getting back to Garrett in Wild Rain, I thought he came across as a little too perfect. He cooks; he does the dishes; he’s trained as a lawyer, carpenter, and journalist and excels at all three; he’s been around the world when he was in the navy; he’s a perfect, tender lover; he always knows just when to intervene and when not to intervene; even his “nosy” journalist tendencies never cross the line. And while I enjoyed all of these traits (a polymath hero FTW!), flaws and foibles are what help characters feel realistic, and he didn’t really have any to speak of. Let me give a specific example in the text that I think was a missed opportunity: Of course, being a male, Garrett fleetingly wondered if the two had ever been lovers, but put that out of his mind because it was really none of his business. Now, I’m not saying Garrett has to be a typical jealous alpha male stock hero who tromps around for a third of the book over this, but can’t he stew in his jealousy for a couple of sentences at least? I think being in a mental snit for about half a paragraph would have made him feel more real, more human, more relatable. Given him a bit of spark. And, it’s not just Garrett who has been having this problem lately. I’ve read a few recent romances where the hero or heroine thinks an uncharitable thought, only to take it back within the same or next sentence. Are authors or editors worried readers will storm Twitter, angry that the protagonist engages in “wrongthink?” If that’s the case, which I suspect it is, it’s flattening out characters who could be a lot more complex. Other than the hero, a few clunky character descriptions, and some pat solutions to major plot points (which I won’t spoil here), Wild Rain was a fun romance that kept me turning the pages. I definitely recommend it, especially for heroine-centric readers. If you are a hero-centric reader with a sweet tooth for cinnamon rolls, I think you’ll enjoy it too, but don’t expect him to be as fleshed out as… Read more »
Woo hoo! Thanks for reviewing this one, Lisa. I have the e-book on hold at the library and can hardly wait. Beverly Jenkins is one of my favorite HR writers. Tempest was fantastic, and I’ve been waiting to read Spring’s story ever since. I’m so glad it sounds like it’s going to live up to my high expectations.
Ditto for me. I’ve been waiting for Spring’s story as well and so glad to hear it’s a good one!
As of right now, I am at the 21% mark. It’s a page turner!
How you enjoy it!