Tag: West-Virginia Setting

REVIEW: Linda Howard’s TROUBLEMAKER

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TroublemakerMiss Bates started to read romance after a 30-year hiatus … oh, the waste, the waste! Linda Howard’s Mackenzie’s Mountain and Dream Man were two of the first romances she read. She loved every alpha-moment of them: loved her heroes’ “guyness” (Howard’s word, not Miss B’s) and her only-seemingly-fragile heroines’ steeliness. What joy and excitement coursed through Miss Bates when she saw that Howard had a new romantic suspense novel coming out, one in a vein she hadn’t written in in years. There was bated breath and sparkles in Miss Bates’s eyes as she flipped open the Kindle to dig into Troublemaker. Yup, she sighed at the opening, classic Howard.

Morgan Yancy is leader of a GO-Team, a paramilitary government group who fixes bad things, goes to bad places and takes out bad guys. Morgan loves his job and, in typical Howard-esque maleness, he’s all about the hyper-masculine: “There was nothing like blowing shit up or getting shot at to give a man a jolt of adrenaline.” We meet Morgan in Washington D.C., home from yet another secret mission, taking some R&R on his fishing boat. But he’s barely gotten his first zzz’s at home when he’s shot and nearly dies: chest wound, cardiac arrest, the works. Axel MacNamara, the Go-Teams’ head, suspects internal leaks and security breaches. As soon as Morgan can be moved, Axel sends him to his ex-stepsister, Isabeau “Bo” Maran, in Hamrickville, West Virginia, to recuperate and hide until they figure out what’s going on, who and why someone wants Morgan dead.
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REVIEW: Inez Kelley’s SHOULD’VE BEEN HOME YESTERDAY To Be With You

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Miss Bates loves trees and lives in a country with plenty! She writes and reads and ponders in company with the maple tree in her front yard and records time’s passage by its changing leaves. This is one reason she enjoyed Inez Kelley’s “Country Roads” series. Kelley has set her three romances in West Virginia’s forest and the intricacies of a traditional logging industry (something else Kelley’s setting shares with Miss B’s country) making its way in the modern world, walking a fine line between profit and conservation. Moreover, Miss Bates enjoyed the romances: they’re sexy, heroines don’t take gaff from the heroes, and the heroes are manly-men who concede. Of the three, Take Me Home, The Place I Belong, and Should’ve Been Home Yesterday, Take Me Home edges out as her favourite. The first and third in the series were un-put-downable: the prose is smooth; the setting, beautiful; the heroine and hero, lovingly conflicted. Should’ve Been Home Yesterday had the added advantage of being a convincing contemporary marriage-of-convenience narrative, one of Miss Bates’ favourite romance tropes. Furthermore, it was a second-chance-at-love story, a wonderful combination of flashback, forward action, and two people meant to be together if they would only be honest with each other. At least there are reasons in their past that make the close-mouthed agony understandable. Despite the wonderfulness, Should’ve Been Home Yesterday suffered from the same problems, to a lesser degree, that Miss Bates found in The Place I Belong. Continue reading