I’ve long had a soft spot for Beverly Jenkins’ historicals. She tends to put a lot more history into the romance than many authors, and one could never accuse her of writing wallpaper. With Destiny’s Embrace, she starts a new series in 19th century California with a romance between two very strong-minded people who have…
It’s easy to forget that just a scant hundred years ago people all over this country lived under rough, primitive conditions. That in 1910, the West was still being won. And it is painful to be reminded that for many centuries people of all kinds faced prejudices in this great melting pot of ours. Some…
Ned Buntline, the writer who is credited with popularizing the dime novel in the American Old West, would have loved Elaine Levine’s writing. Levine pens Western romances using old fashioned storytelling techniques. Her stories are often over the top with quirky individual characters and blood-thirsty events geared to the gut. Leah and the Bounty Hunter,…
This is one of those books that’s incredibly difficult to grade because on one hand I liked it, but on the other there are problems that are extremely difficult to ignore. Often, the points that I enjoyed within the story were essentially the sources of the problems. Created as a killing machine during the Civil…
Finding a husband for a girl living on a remote ranch in the late 1800s was difficult when the only men she saw with any regularity were crusty ranch hands or those already married. For three sisters in their early 20s, there just weren’t enough possible beaus to go around. Thomas cleverly tackles this problem…
A few publishers have continued to publish Western romances, but recently, I’ve started seeing more of them from other houses as well. With Pieces of Sky, we have the return of a type of Western romance I’ve missed – the big, sprawling saga. This debut novel has a slightly retro feel to it (in a…
Note to self: Step away from the Brava westerns. The Education of Madeline is the second one I’ve read in recent months, and it’s as disastrous as the first. I’m starting to get the impression that readers who want something more than a sexual checklist should look elsewhere for their entertainment. Madeline Brewster is a…
Second in Sarah McCarty’s Hell’s Eight historical western series about a group of Texas Rangers in the pre-Civil War era, Sam’s Creed achieves what Caine’s Reckoning managed to do. Once again using an erotic backdrop, she creates a mythic western hero, protective, dominant, and emotionally distant – but never cruel – who believes he is…
Somehow I suspect that the hero in High Plains Bride did not expect to find the woman who betrayed him fourteen years earlier showing up on his doorstep and demanding favors of him at gunpoint. Still, that is just how the book opens and the broken relationship that is healed and rekindled kept me reading…
Lovers of Western/Frontier romances sure have there work cut out for them. If you are like me and have a strong affection for this subgenre, you know the pickings are mighty slim. Thankfully, Kate Bridges seems to know a thing or two about a good historic romance not set in 19th century England. Even better,…