I've been in a reading slump for a long while now. This book by the divine Jo Goodman picks me right out of it, and I'm ever hopeful again as the last quarter of the year is drawing near when series of books by my very favorite authors are scheduled to parade out.
Kellen Coltrane was in the wrong place at the right time when he shared a car with a dying hired gun who called himself Nat Church, a popular fictional hero in serialized dime novel. The circumstance of the man's death and curiosity in his part lent Kellen to do the stranger's bidding by stepping of the train at a small town named Bitter Springs to pass along the dead man's message to his employer, Penny Royal Hotel and Saloon's proprietress, the Widow Berry. And then the story takes off including multiple murders. Although it's not hard to guess the id of the culprit, I still commend the author for blending in the mystery elements so well she kept me at the edge of my seat for most of the story. The pacing which I usually found inconsistent in this author's previous books is not a problem here.
I stated several times in my other reviews that I love Anne Stuart's heroes because they're dangerously delicious.To be more precise, I love to read about them. But in real life would I choose this type of guy for myself? NO. Jo Goodman's heroes are another story. They're gorgeous, sexy, witty, reliable and just plain goodness. They're not as dark or as uber-alpha, but they also have some challenging, dangerous elements that don't make them cross into boringly good territory. So I'll just say I love them, period. Another superior quality of Jo Goodman's writing lies in her heroines. They share traits of self reliance, intelligence, sensibilty, morality and, above all, strength, all of which I'm attracted to in female characters. However, I often feel turned off by the extent of tragedy/violence the author threw at them, not so much in this book because it's not done to Lorraine directly (the scene is very brutal nevertheless). And maybe that's why I feel this book believable, more so than her previous ones, because it's hard for anyone to even be normal if they experienced what the heroines of Jo Goodman had gone through.
Kellen and Lorraine are a match in every word and I can definitely see them last. One point deduct for an overly easy plot solving at the end.
4/5
Read it yourself.
