Book Review: Sinful by Joan Johnston

Summary (GoodReads):

After a tragic accident takes Delta sergeant Connor Flynn's wife, he faces the toughest fight of his life-battling his in-laws for custody of his two young children. He needs a make-believe wife to take care of the kids while he runs his Wyoming ranch. 

Who better than a woman he already knows and likes-his late wife's best friend? 

Forced to live under the same roof, Eve must hide a love that has never died, while Connor fights his growing need for a woman who was forbidden fruit during his marriage. Can two lonely people set adrift by fate and haunted by guilt find redemption in the healing embrace of love?

My Thoughts:

Well, I have mixed feelings about Sinful. I was very intrigued by the premise of the book - I'm a sucker for the 'I've been secretly in love with you my whole life!' thing, though I admit it's rarely done to my satisfaction.- but the execution wasn't what I hoped for.

To start with, apparently this book, while it's the first in the King's Brats series, it also belongs to a bigger universe called Bitter Creek; and from the start I felt like I was missing something. Like there was info I needed but didn't have.

The prologue felt more like a cold open... only that it didn't have much to do with the actual story, it reeked of set up, but I wasn't sure for what. We were constantly teased with family secrets and feuds, but there was absolutely no pay off, just more set up.

Also, there were a lot of things that were made to be a big deal but weren't really, like King kicking his daughters out of the house (with a year of head notice and when they are all grown ups that allegedly already make their own money?) and they act like it's the end of the world because they don't get to live in a ranch where they don't seem to spend a lot of time to begin with... sounds a bit much. 

The actual story about Connor and Eve seemed to take a backseat to the many feuds going around, they had some chemistry and seemed to like each other well enough, but I never really felt like Connor wanted more than a mother to his kids. And they both came off as a little cowardly *SPOILER* they had really been pinning for each other for 20 years, and the whole diary thing? yeah that was Convenient! *END OF SPOILER*

I'm a little curious about all the secrets, sure, but I'm not sure a) the reveals are going to be satisfactory, and b) that they author isn't going to keep setting up for a few more books, so I think I'm going to cut this series loose. 

Book Review: Wyoming Bride by Joan Johnston

At First Sight: Ever since her older sister Miranda left to become a mail-order bride, twins Hannah and Hetty and their sister Josie have been waiting for a letter from her. But when no letter came in months, and the twins were about to age-out of the orphanage, Josie convince Hannah to also become a mail-order bride. 

Hannah was never as self-sacrificing as their older sister Miranda, but she seems unable to say no to Josie and so gives up on her dreams of a prince to sweep her off her feet and agrees to marry Mr. McMurtry (a middle-aged Irishman who agrees to take her and her sisters with him to Wyoming, where he expects to open a dry goods store). 

Mr. McMutry is not the husband of Hannah's dreams but he's tolerant and patient, even after Hetty's behavior gets them kicked off the wagon train and they are forced to make their own way. Until he dies, leaving Hannah pregnant and in the middle of nowhere. 

Flint Creed was riding hard, trying to cool off his head after leaving his younger brother Ransom's engagement party to Miss Emmaline Simmons, the girl Flint was in love with in secret but who chose his brother instead. Flint knows things will get complicated once Ransom marries her and they have to live all together in the same house, and he quickly reaches the conclusion that he needs to find a wife of his own. 

And, as luck would have it, he finds Hannah in the prairie, alone, thirsty and sunburned... and with no memory of what happened to her sisters after Mr. McMurtry's death. 

Second Glance: I got Wyoming Bride via NetGalley, and I was hoping I would like it better than Texas Bride, the previous book in the series. And for the most part, I did. Hannah was likable enough as was Emmaline, Ransom and even Flint; and the story is pretty evenly distributed between the two couples once Hannah meets them.

But I had serious problems with the beginning of the story because quite frankly Hetty and Josie were just plain annoying and vexing. Hannah sacrificed herself to keep them safe but they are very ungrateful, and even after Hannah warns them to behave or they'll get kicked out of the wagon train, they don't care and do as their please: Josie spends all her time reading and not doing her part of the chores, and Hetty just flirts with two men, trying to get one to propose.

Once they were out of the picture, the story became a lot more tolerable. Even if Flint was a little too obsessed with Emmaline at first and remains so for a big chunk of the book, Hannah sometimes has moments of woe-is-me but it's not overdone and annoying, and she does have a bit of a spine, which is nice.

The story between Emmaline and Ransom went a little in circles but it also showcased some very real issues about life back in those days - Emmaline has a near-paralyzing fear of getting pregnant since her mother died during childbirth, and there is something going on with this guy who is trying to ruin every ranch in sight to become a powerful land-owner.

Bottom Line: All in all, Wyoming Bride (to be released January 1st, 2013) was a better read than the previous book in the series but it wasn't perfect by any means. Still, I find Ms Johnston's style oddly compelling and once I get into the story I can't stop reading, which is good. Plus, I wonder if she'll be able to redeem Hetty and Josie in their books, so I'm quite likely to read those books as well. 

Book Review: Texas Bride by Joan Johnston

At First Sight: Following the death of their parents during The Great Chicago Fire, the Wentworth siblings were put on a orphanage where they endured a lot of mistreatment from the main caretaker. Still, the six siblings managed to stick together... until Miranda, the oldest, turned 18. 

Knowing she had little chance of keeping them all together once she was out and and with a low-wage job at a hotel, Miranda agrees to go along with her sister Josie's crazy scheme and become a mail-order bride for a Texas rancher named Jacob Creed, hoping once she gets to Texas her husband turns out to be wealthy enough to allow her to bring all her siblings from Chicago to live with them. 

At the last minute, and following a rather harsh beating from the caretaker, Miranda decides to take her little brothers, Nick and Harry, along with her. 

When they finally arrive in Texas after a long, difficult trip things aren't quite what she expected. Her husband is young, and reasonably handsome but he's also butting heads with the biggest land-owner in the region, who happens to be his stepfather, and that's making his ranching operation twice as hard as it already would be. 

Jake also haves a young daughter, Anna-Mae, a surly, wheelchair bound father-in-law and its still clinging to the memory of his first wife, whom he loved dearly. 

Second Glance: So, I picked up Texas Bride both because I had heard good things about it and because I got the second book of the series, Wyoming Bride, for review. 

It took me a while to get into the story, because it does take a few chapters for Miranda and Jake to met, and once they did it was a pretty standard story of two people reluctantly falling in love with a few extra troubles thrown. Miranda and Jake weren't neither good nor bad and it was kind of nice seeing them blend their families, even if Jake was rather reluctant about it. 

It was the other problems that started to sink the book for me. Miranda decides not to tell Jake about her sisters at first since he's none-too pleased about her bringing along two extra-mouths to feed without letting him know first. And Nick's sourly attitude doesn't help. And this will complicate things later on, leading into the next book. 

Also, the feud between Jake and his stepfather is a bit senseless. It's never really explained why Blackthorne - the stepfather - is so hard on Jake, part of their animosity is explained but not all the way. And then the whole thing is over. 

Which was kind of the problem with the ending, it just ends all too neatly in someways, too neatly for a story that was all over the place all the time. 

1/2