#TBRChallenge 2022: A Season of the Heart

The Book: A Season of the Heart by Jillian Hart, Kate Bridges and Mary Burton

The Particulars: Historical romance anthology, Harlequin Historical #771, 2005, Out of Print, Not available digitally (at one point it was though - so check your digital TBRs and/or local library).

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?: It's a historical western anthology with a Christmas theme published by Harlequin Historical. Of course it was in my TBR.

The Review: I don't know exactly how long I've had this anthology in my TBR, but well over a decade is likely in the ballpark - and that's the problem. Because I think younger, less jaded, not beaten down to her soul by the last two years Wendy might have enjoyed this purely on a comfort read level - for a lot of the same reasons folks turn to Hallmark movies. But it's 2022 and I've lived five lifetimes in the past two years and this ended up being an anthology where none of the stories entirely worked for me.

Rocky Mountain Christmas by Jillian Hart is straight-up Rescue Fantasy. Sheriff Mac McKaslin is summoned to the train station on a snowy night where a single mother and her young daughter have been discovered stowing away on the train. The train conductor (in all his leering, "I'm sure there's some way you can settle up missy..." glory) is demanding restitution for his employer and Mac, while not wanting to throw her in jail, can't feed her to the wolves.  So he makes all the appropriate mouth noises and takes Carrie Montgomery into town, depositing her with his parents until he can figure out what to do with her.

What he does is basically try to get her out of town as fast as possible. Mac's a widower, haunted by his wife's tragic death, and Carrie makes him feel tingly in his manly bits - which is obviously like the worst thing that can happen to these sorts of romance heroes.  Her parents put her to work in their store, he secures her a train ticket to Seattle (where she was hoping to go to find work) and of course Carrie is one of those prideful Won't Take No Charity sorts of romance heroines so they butt heads.   

I mean, that's pretty much it.  Then they decide after knowing each other a few days that they're in love and the requisite marriage proposal happens.

I mean, it's fine, I guess?  But there's just not much fire here. There's not much of anything here.  Heroine in trouble, hero playing white knight, the end.  Meh.

Grade = C

The Christmas Gifts by Kate Bridges was the best story in the bunch for me, and while it didn't light my world on fire, it was better than OK. Sergeant James Fielder, a Canadian Mountie, is patrolling an isolated area on his dog sled when he finds an abandoned baby. Out in the cold.  The infant girl is cold, hungry and he's days away from civilization but he knocks himself out to get to Maggie Greerson's store in record time. Maggie is a young widow and James has mighty unrequited feelings for her.  Anyway, Maggie takes the baby in, her and James rekindle feelings they once had for each other and deal with past baggage between them.

What stood out for me in this story was what Maggie and James fight about - money.  Maggie is a widow with a successful business and sees all men as interlopers out to get their hands on her money.  James has a strained relationship with his father stemming from financial hardships the family had when he was growing up.  As sick as this sounds, I love reading a good argument in a romance story, and this was a really good argument.  This is also the story that I found was heaviest on the Christmas atmosphere, so a good candidate for a quick Christmas Eve read.

Grade = B-

Before Mary Burton took to writing suspense novels she wrote several historical westerns, and while The Christmas Charm starts out promising it ended up leaving me cranky.  It's 1869 and Colleen Garland is a young widow who has spent the past several years nursing an elderly husband from complications of a stroke. She made a lot of sacrifices so that her younger sister, Deirdre, could have the opportunities she never did, but now the bubble-headed ninny says she's quitting school and she's run off to marry a local ranch foreman!  Turns out the foreman works for Keith Garrett, the boy Colleen loved prior to the War, and who refused to marry her before he went off to fight. He's now a prosperous local rancher and naturally all butt-hurt that Colleen didn't wait for him - so there's tension there.

I cannot abide romance heroes like Keith. He's all up in his fee-fees because Colleen married "an old man" not considering for one hot damn minute that maybe she had no choice. It was either marry the old man or become a prostitute.  Her parents died, she finds out her father took out another mortgage on their land, the cattle all died during a terrible winter, the crops failed, like it all went to hell.  And there's Keith judging her after the fact. The same Keith who was all "I couldn't marry you, Virginia needed men to fight" and I'm reading this thinking child, please! F*ck Virginia!

And then of course they fall into bed together and they decide to get married and this asshat is all like "You need to give up the store."  After she worked herself to the bone to keep the store profitable after her husband's stroke?! The store that saved her from a frickin' life of poverty?!  Go f*ck yourself Keith. And then go f*ck the horse you rode in on. Seriously, this guy!

But of course they end up working it out and she pops out twin boys during a Christmas Day epilogue.  He's a jerk and she's an idiot for not shooting him in his manly pride. And on top of all this? He fought for the wrong damn side.  Seriously, I hated this guy.

Grade = D

So not a terribly successful anthology, although Bridges' story was not without some charm.  Honestly, what I'm taking away from this reading experience is the satisfaction that a long neglected print book is out of my TBR. Dare I say it? It feels like an actual sense of accomplishment.

Retro Review: Bride for McCain by Mary Burton

This review of Bride for McCain by Mary Burton was first published at The Romance Reader in 2000.  I rated it 3-Hearts (C range) with a MPAA content rating of "PG."

+++++

Jessica Tierney wasn’t happy about returning to Sacramento to begin with, and now she’s on the run. Returning from boarding school for the reading of her late father’s will she learns that she is to be the sole beneficiary. Of course, there’s a catch: she has to marry her father’s business partner, William Perry, within 30 days and produce an heir within 2 years. Otherwise, all of her father’s money will go to the Saint Bridget’s Orphanage in San Francisco.

William is an odious creature who is determined to get what’s coming to him. Jessica manages to escape from his clutches and hurriedly gets to the train station. Unfortunately, the train isn’t going to leave until one late passenger arrives, a Miss Emma Grimes, who has been hired as a school teacher for Prosperity, Colorado. Jessica is desperate, so she claims to be Miss Grimes and boards the train to freedom.

Of course, her deceit soon snowballs when she meets her future employer, Ross McCain. He is determined to bring education to Prosperity, and soon Jessica finds herself not only keeping up with her charade, but signing a contract.

Ross McCain is more than surprised to see Jessica Tierney. After losing the first two teachers to marriage, he was determined to hire an old spinster. But when he meets Jessica, he knows it’s all over. When the single men in town get a look at her, they’ll go back on their promises to not court the only eligible woman in town. The only way to keep the new teacher is if Ross marries her himself, but will Jessica be willing? And will Ross be able to remain aloof when he’s so drawn to his beautiful new employee?

A Bride for McCain could have been a stand out western romance, but one thing kept holding it back: the hero. Ross McCain is a take charge kind of guy, which is almost a necessity for a western, but he’s a major bully. Just because he built Prosperity with his money and mining business, he feels it gives him free reign to run the residents’ lives, and that includes Jessica. He never asks her what she feels, or what she wants, but instead tells her. Jessica spends the entire novel getting railroaded by Ross.

Normally, a bully hero would sour me on a book as a whole, but Burton saves what could have been a disaster with Jessica’s character. Granted, Jessica weaves herself into a web of lies and drags a whole town along for the ride, but she spends a great deal of time wrestling with her conscience. She knows what she is doing is wrong, but she can’t seem to find a way out, and Ross doesn’t exactly make telling the truth easy. She’s also incredibly feisty, and while Ross bullies her she does her best to stand up for herself.

The secondary characters are also well written, most notably Ross’s “maid,” Peg. Not a maid in the old-fashioned sense, but an observant and tough woman who essentially runs the whole household. There are also an array of townsfolk that contribute to adding the small town feel of the story.
Mary Burton’s debut historical romance is not without merit and shows quite a bit of promise. But a leading man who bullies his love interest just didn’t appeal this reader.

++++

Wendy Looks Back: Burton is writing romantic suspense these days but she got her start writing westerns for Harlequin Historical.  I've read several by her and she's one of those authors where I inhale her books, like them to varying degrees and then?  Have zero recall about them after I finish the last chapter.  I've still got one or two of her westerns buried in the TBR.  I save her books for when my brain is melting and real life is pulling me in a ton of directions.  They're easy reads that keep me engaged while reading them.

TBR Challenge 2012: The Lightkeeper's Woman

The Book: The Lightkeeper's Woman by Mary Burton

The Particulars: Historical romance, Harlequin Historical #693, 2004, Out of Print, Available in Digital

Why Was It In Wendy's TBR?:  I've read Mary Burton's historicals before and I'm a sucker for lighthouse settings. 

The Review:  Alanna Patterson has come to the god-forsaken coastal town of Easton, North Carolina to close the door on her past forever.  She was once madly, passionately in love with Caleb Pitt, a captain on one of her father's finest ships.  They had plans to marry, and were already lovers.  Then on his last voyage before their wedding there is a terrible accident.  The ship goes down, men die, but Caleb survives.  What follows is an inquest, and accusations that Caleb and his crew were incompetent.  It's now two years later and Alanna's life is very different.  Her father has committed suicide, the family finances are in ruins, all of their so-called "friends" won't receive her and she's on the verge of accepting a marriage proposal from another man.  But first she must deliver a wooden box that her father bequeathed to Caleb - a box Caleb has already sent back (with a scathing note, naturally) once.

Caleb is now the lighthouse keeper, a hermit who only comes into town when absolutely necessary.  A storm is blowing in, he looks out and spots a boat.  He recognizes the local idiot at the helm and catches his breath when he sees the woman.  Could it be?  No, it possibly can't be.  Alanna?  What the holy heck is she doing there?  Naturally he rescues her, but continued gnarly weather means he's stuck with her, alone, on his island until the waters calm. 

There are a number of elements I really enjoyed about this story.  I liked that Caleb and Alanna had already been lovers.  I liked that Alanna is impulsive, and not the sort of woman to back down from a fight.  I also really appreciated that she's halfway to knowing something was rotten in Denmark before arriving on Caleb's doorstep.  She arrives in Easton on the pretense of giving him the box, but truly she's there to get some answers.  She once lived the life of a well-to-do pampered daughter, but the last couple of years have drastically altered her fortunes.  She's different, her life is different, so when the truth comes tumbling out she doesn't automatically scream at Caleb that he's lying.

This story runs a little hot and cold for me though when it comes to Caleb.  At first he's portrayed as the local hermit.  A man who has shut himself off from everybody.  Then he's determined to have Alanna back in his life.  Then he heads into town and everybody loves him, he interacts with everybody like he's the unofficial town mayor, and then he morphs back into wanting to send Alanna away for "her own good."  He's not a terribly consistent fellow, but hey - he's a hunky loner with a badass facial scar.  Guys working with less than that have made credible romance heroes.

The story itself moves along at a fairly smooth clip, although pretty much all of the conflict hinges on Alanna and Caleb being too proud and stupid to have talked to each other back when his boat sank.  There's also the letters he wrote to her that she naturally didn't read and the box from her father that Caleb refuses to open.  I'll be honest, I tend to hate plot devices like this because they are utterly unbelievable to me.  Seriously, who doesn't open letters, especially when they are addressed to them?  And cripes Caleb - even Brad Pitt wants to know "What's in the box?!?!"  And Morgan Freeman opened it!

In the author's dedication she thanks her critique partners, one of whom is Cathy Maxwell.  What I find interesting is that how I feel about Maxwell's historicals is exactly how I feel about Burton's.  They're easy reading, they go down smooth like a really nice dessert wine, I enjoy them while I'm reading them, but a day later?  Yeah, I have no recall.  None.  They're chocolate chip cookie reads.  They're a great snack, quite tasty, but it's not like a steak dinner at a five star restaurant.  They're not the sort of reads that stick with me for days, weeks, months after the experience.  Which means it's probably a good thing I'm blogging about this book, because other than the lighthouse aspect, I'm not sure how much I'll recall down the road.

In the end this was a nice, pleasant diversion.  I liked the story, I liked the characters, and I loved the setting.  Sure, it didn't rock my world and I'm not in a swoon over it - but it was a pleasant, leisurely experience that kept me entertained for a couple of days.  There are times in my life when I just need a book like this one.  Which is why I keep some Mary Burton historicals lying around in the TBR.  Break glass in case of emergency.

Final Grade = B-