Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Review book courtesy of Penguin Group
Also posted on Epinions.com.
Lorraine Berry owns the Pennyroyal Saloon and Hotel, and she’s worried about her little town of Bitter Springs, Wyoming. So worried that she’s sent word to a gunslinger, offering to hire him to come protect the town from a ruthless local rancher.
Kellen Coltrane is having a comfortable train ride when a mysterious encounter sends him on a detour to Bitter Springs to carry out a dying man’s last wish. Once he meets Lorraine, he finds himself swept up in the town’s troubles and pretending to be something he isn’t. And as he learns more about Lorraine, he finds himself wanting to be more than just her protector.
is by Jayne Ann Krentz, writing as Jayne Castle. It’s an odd book, set in a world called Harmony, peopled with folks who have odd and unusual abilities, containing such creatures as dust bunnies (they seem to make very devoted companions)—among more dangerous things. Yet it’s surprisingly modern-day in its setting despite that, complete with roads, cottages, and even SUVs. (I gather there are other Harmony novels, but I found this one stood alone surprisingly well.)
is a “Spellbound Falls” romance. It seems to be billed as one of those books that’s set in the same world as an author’s previous books, but that’s supposed to stand alone relatively well. Or at least, that’s the impression I got from the cover. Certainly we’re seeing more and more of this lately—we’re getting more series of indeterminate length, often with smaller print runs, meaning that you can’t assume a reader will have read all previous books when they pick up a new one (particularly if you’re hoping to pick up new readers as you go along). At any rate, my impression was definitely wrong. While the story itself sort of stands alone (at least for the first 100 pages, which is what I read before stopping), the world does not. Sure, you can tell there’s some paranormal to the world as you read, but it hits a point where the author is just dumping in mention of weird thing after weird thing, late enough in the game that it feels like an out-of-nowhere genre shift. (Even the back-of-the-book text, if you aren’t familiar with the series, gives no real indication that this is a paranormal romance, other than the “Spellbound Falls” moniker.)
