Review: Two Stories. 4 Stars for the 1st, 2 Stars for the 2nd
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 29, 2014
First Story: "The Purchased Bride" by Ruth Ann Nordin:This author has a really good feel for characters and motivation. The basic story is problematical; (SPOILER ALERT) It's straining credulity to believe that a deaf man's family could remain ignorant of his disability for twenty years, chalking it up to being "slow in the head" instead. That said, the author does such a beautiful job of telling this romance - telling it back and forth from the different points of view of the two main characters - and doing such a lovely, sensitive job with it - that you tend to forgive the sensibility lapses, and the few anachronistic words and remarksSecond Story: "She Came By Train" by Janet Syas Nitsick:Not worth the electrons it's written with. It starts with the classic romance novel setup, governess is hired (by mail order?) to tend to the two children of a lonely, heartsore widower: then it descends into a series of banalities, one after another, snowballing into a mindless jumble of poor character development, vapid dialogue, weak motivation, and anachronistic words, phrases and attitudes... One stupid little thing that irritated me no end - the man from Nebraska says "pretty", while the man from Virginia says "purdy" and "you sure are the purdiest thing". Aaaaaaaargh!!! A small thing, I know, but so pointless in that it was the only word the Virginian spoke in "dialect". Amateurism at its worst.Bottom line: I'll be checking out other stories by Ruth Ann Nordin; I will avoiding everything by Janet Syas Nitsick