Review: Overlong, with plot holes
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 08 17, 2012
Jenny is a new mother living in a gold mining town. She's also a new widow and she blames Jason Colby for convincing her husband to take the job of Marshal, which she believes led to his death. But the town of Colby belongs to Jason and he's going to make sure that Jenny and her new baby girl, Lily, are taken care of until they go back to Cedar Rapids, Iowa. But Jenny can't leave until she gets the gold mine her husband bought squared away. Jenny refuses to be beholden to the charismatic Jason Colby. And Jason is determined to get them to leave before his growing attraction to Jenny gets the best of him.This romance was okay, but did have some issues. Formatting was good, but there were several word usage/grammar/homonym errors that were problematic. For example, "waist another breath", it's instead of its, "His admittance to his shortcomings", "was on the grown" instead of ground, "man who's dark past", etc., just in the first four chapters. But it wasn't terribly bad, just annoyingly so. However, more problematic was the pace of the story as well as plot inconsistencies. It took so long for the romance to play out that I started to skim all of the angst-producing "I-want-you-but-can't-have-you" scenes because they just became repetitive and tedious.Plot problems included coincidence piled upon coincidence to drive the plot. *SPOILERS AHEAD* Jenny's husband Myles supposedly knew and had a grudge against Jason Colby who just happened to own the town containing the gold mine that Myles used Jenny's assets to purchase. Jenny was taught how to shoot by her husband, presumably sometime in the last nine months, and she's so good that she was offered a position in a wild west show. As the story develops, there are hints that Jason may have been the one to shoot Myles. Now, how in the world did this information remain hidden for so long in such a small town? Myles may have married Jenny for her money to buy the mine which he apparently knew was played out, because years ago he stashed ill-gotten gains in that very mine. Now the mine is active, but the miners haven't found the hidden money. If Myles (who actually wasn't Myles) was such a bad guy, why didn't he just sneak into the mine and recover his loot instead of saddling himself with a wife? Why put himself in a position to risk his life when he's about to become rich? And this is just one of about a dozen coincidences that just bog down the story. *END SPOILERS*The main characters were fairly well-developed, but Jenny vacillates between an independent, strong woman and a helpless ninny. Jason's past makes him too laden with deep-seated insecurities. Other characters could have been deeper but instead were caricatures. If they were given more presence in the story, it may not have been such an angst-fest.Additionally, if you look at the cover, the people in the photo are dressed not for the old west but for another time period. Even when dressing up, men didn't normally wear ruffled collars. And I'm really beginning to dislike the pregnant/new mother romance theme that has been permeating the Romance genre. There just aren't that many men willing to take on baggage.