Review: Someone In That Town Needed Shin Kicks, But This Is More A Feel Good Book.  Out Of Luck Again.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 18, 2014
This is a feel good book and a good mystery.  I just wish a few shin kicks had been handed out.  There were plenty of candidates, although their actions were several years in the past, the shattered trust and pain still lingered within the heroine.In the lore of the town, the heroine's family sinned against the wealthy family of the H, and since that family was rich and provided many of the jobs locally, the popular opinion fell squarely on the side their economic bread was buttered on.  This resulted in many insults, acts of vandalism, and the heroine being ostracized in the most hurtful ways possible, even though she had no role in the war between the families.  She was a strong person, though and stood her ground, refusing to let herself be driven out of her home and gradually carving a place for herself in the community and managed to make a living despite the best efforts of the hero's father and other to rid themselves of her.  She included others being ground down by life in her circle of kindness, showing herself to be the better person and making a sort of truce with her home town.This is upset by the return of the hero, whom the heroine had loved from afar when she was young, to take the helm of the family business when his father died.  The heroine is now a widow and has found a certain amount of peace in coming to terms with her past, as well as the death of her husband and mother.  She is no longer the beleaguered girl the hero never really noticed, but she is thrown back to that hopeless infatuation she knows has no future.  She also is concerned about whether the coals of the old feud will be stirred.The hero is taken with the heroine, and taken aback when he learns her identify.  He is fully aware that acting on his interest would be the worst possible thing, so you know that's just what he's going to do.  His mother is appalled, never having forgiven the heroine's family for the pain in her marriage and quite willing to pile it all on the head of the heroine since she is the only remaining member still alive.This heroine is not a doormat, and while she does experience a certain amount of brain leakage out of her ears when the hero kisses her, she retains enough gray matter to refuse to let the hero make her his dirty little secret.  She will not again expose herself to the scorn of a community whether or not it's deserved and sticks to her resolve that any man she forms a relationship with will live withing that relationship in the full light of day and the view of the town.  She also serves the hero a stinging lesson in how wealth and power can distort the reality of a situation.  He never doubted the truth of her family's sins against his, and he is faced with the proof that it wasn't necessarily so.Unfortunately, his return seems to have stirred the bad feelings to life again and the heroine becomes the target of vandalism that quickly escalates from malicious and hurtful, to threatening, to murderous with stunning speed.  Still staggered by the revelations that his family was largely at fault in what happened to the heroine's family, our hero now is faced with protecting the woman he's rapidly coming to love--if only he can get past the ghost of her husband, a state policeman who died a hero.How he accepts that bad history or not, he loves the heroine, works to convince her of that while trying to protect her, and pushes to discover who is responsible for the vandalism and worse is an interesting read.  I began reading this morning and it is now 2:30 a.m.  I was not able to tear myself away until I finished.  It launches immediately into the action and yanks you into the story and doesn't let you out until you emerge at the end, a little shaky but satisfied with the HEA.The editing is good (unlike so many new offerings) and I liked that the writer didn't put the heroine into the standard romance deep freeze where she sits and waits for her unrequited love to come to her and brush the ice crystals from her shoulders.  This heroine gets on with her life, finds love and marriage, and lives a  normal life.  She is shown as kind and not bitter about the unfair treatment she and her family received, although there is the hint of a well deserved anger at the unfairness of it.  She is a very complex, likable character and you cheer for her to triumph at the end.  The writer was remarkable gentle with all the characters, adding an amazing amount of nuance to each person involved considering the length of the book.As stated in the title, this is a feel good book (no shin kicking) and even the hero's mother is saved from her initial role as raving female dog (ammy concession) lunatic by showing her pain in the situation that had unfolded years ago in her far less than perfect marriage, and the damage that still dogs her.  Even the classmates who boycotted their own graduation ceremony because the heroine was valedictorian are given a pass.  It makes it hard for those of us who are a little blood thirsty, but it was a good enough read without it (sigh).There is sexual content, it is sensual rather than hot and doesn't make you feel dirty or like you're getting an education in unlikely things you can do with your anatomy.  The hero pulls out the magic pen a little faster than I would have liked, but that's a minor quibble in a very good book.I highly recommend it for those who want a nice story with a little mystery wrapped around it.