Wed Under Western Skies By Carolyn Davidson, Cheryl St.John, Jenna Kernan

Summary

Abandoned by Carolyn Davidson - “Abandoned” is a stand-alone novella that almost entirely takes place on a wagon train headed west. Elizabeth was part of a wagon train that was attacked by marauding Indians who killed most of the settlers and burned their possessions. By some miracle, they left her alive and didn’t take her with them. She’s found unconscious by Cameron, one of the scouts for a different wagon train, who takes her back to his group. There he keeps her in his wagon, although him caring for an unmarried young woman sets some busybodies’ tongues wagging. Cameron is a widower who has a piece of land in Colorado, and this is his last trip with the wagon train. He’s brought supplies with him this time, and after they reach Denver, he’s planning to settle down and find another wife. He views it as fortuitous that Elizabeth is basically dropped into his lap and wants to marry her as soon as they find a preacher, but she’s suffering from partial amnesia and doesn’t want to rush into anything until she’s certain there isn’t someone else out there waiting for her.

Sadly Cameron and Elizabeth aren’t very deep characters. Most of what we learn about them I’ve already outlined in the paragraph above. A few more tidbits of Elizabeth’s past come to light as she slowly regains her memory in bits and pieces, but overall, I didn’t get a good sense of what made either of them who they are. Cameron lost his wife, but doesn’t really seem too broken up over it. Even Elizabeth, who suffered through a traumatic event seems to bear few ill effects aside from a couple of minor injuries and one scene where she has a bad dream that’s easily comforted away. That being the case and since she didn’t receive any major knocks on the head, I couldn’t quite figure out why she had amnesia. Maybe the experience was traumatic enough to make her forget, not only the event, but most of her life. However, if that was the case, then I felt that should have been shown through other emotional means such as her being more frightened. Then there was Cameron who got on my nerves with his chauvinistic, patronizing ways. I’ve admittedly read heroes who were worse, but many of his comments made made me roll my eyes at their ridiculousness. Then there’s also the proprietary way in which he treats Elizabeth. Basically from the moment he finds her, he decides she’s his and tells her he’s going to marry her rather than asking. For her part, Elizabeth only puts up a token fuss over his high-handedness, and instead, generally eats it up, even though, when her memory returns, she makes a complaint about a friend of her father’s who was traveling with them doing the exact same thing. So overall, I felt like she was a bit of a marshmallow who didn’t have much of a backbone. I’m all for a man protecting and caring for his woman, but he needs to treat her as his equal and not make silly assumptions that she’ll just roll over and agree to marry him.

In addition to the characterizations being lacking, the plot of “Abandoned” was pretty thin. It mostly consists of them traveling on the wagon train the rest of the way to Denver, which was probably the most interesting thing about the story. I’m always up for a good old west tale about settlers forging their way to a new life and I like the details of pioneer living. However, there’s not much in the way of conflict other than Elizabeth not having all her memories and feeling like she can’t accept Cameron’s suit until she knows for sure whether she has a husband and then her also wanting to see if she can find her father who might still be alive. Also the romance doesn’t have much depth either. It’s pretty much insta-love with little rhyme or reason as to how, why, or when they fell for each other. Additionally there were a couple of other story points that were more minor but nonetheless bothered me. First, Cameron has a line not long after he finds Elizabeth, where he basically insinuates that all Indians are brutes and that they all view white people as their enemies, which wasn’t true and seemed racially insensitive to me. Then toward the end, there’s a brief mention of someone shooting another person for being a coward. Now admittedly the dead person was clearly no prize, but I didn’t feel like his actions warranted the death penalty, especially given that he’d supposedly been friends with the man who shot him. For all these reasons, “Abandoned” ended up being just an OK read for me. I was able to give it three stars, probably due to the short length of the story. If I’d had to put up with Cameron for much longer, though, my rating likely would have dropped even more. It was my first read by Carolyn Davidson, but since I have several more of her books on my TBR pile, I’ll likely give her another chance to wow me at some point. I just may not be in a hurry to do so and I’ll be hoping that her next hero isn’t quite so annoying and that the story and characters have a bit more depth. Star Rating: ***; Sensuality Rating: 3

Almost a Bride by Cheryl St. John - “Almost a Bride” is the third and final story in Cheryl St. John’s Copper Creek Brides series. It features Charmaine, who is a cousin to Annie from the first book, Sweet Annie, and a friend to Kate from the second book, His Secondhand Wife. Charmaine has been waiting for four long years for her beau to propose and decides that maybe it’s time to look toward greener pastures. While filling in for another cousin on a float-building committee for the upcoming Founder’s Day parade, she starts getting to know Jack who is new in town. Jack used to live in the mountains, but he moved closer to town for the sake of his young son, Daniel. However, he’s mostly been keeping to himself, until he volunteers his barn as a site for building the float. As they work on the project together, an attraction begins to form, but Jack may have trouble getting past his preconceived notions of the type of woman he thinks Charmaine is.

Charmaine watched while her cousin, Annie, and all her friends got married. As the last single woman of marriageable age in Copper Creek, she’s starting to feel left out and also wondering what’s wrong with her that her long-time beau hasn’t yet proposed after such a long time of courting. Thinking that maybe he needs a little push in the right direction, she considers the idea of using another man to try to make him jealous. Then she meets Jack who would be the perfect candidate, except that she begins to develop real feelings for the single dad and his charming young son. Charmaine is an only child, and although I wouldn’t exactly call her spoiled, she has had a pretty good life and has come to enjoy fanciful things. She views those around her like Annie and Kate as special but doesn’t feel like others view her as special, so she’s a perfectionist who’s driven to try to be the best at everything she does and to present a flawless image of herself. Yet, deep down, she has an independent streak that makes her very special indeed if only someone would take notice of her. I really liked Charmaine in the other two books for her kindness toward Annie and Kate, and I still liked her very much in this story. She continues to show that kindness and generosity toward Jack and Daniel, and it’s Jack who in turn helps her see that’s she’s special just the way she is without any of the trappings she sometimes puts on.

Jack used to live in the mountains where he was married to a half-Cheyenne woman who passed away when Daniel was just an infant, leaving him a single father. He has a business making saddles and tack for horses and decided to move closer to town, both to attract more business and so Daniel could attend school. He meets Charmine briefly at a tea party at Kate’s and then again later, at the schoolhouse, where she volunteers to help build the school’s float, after which he insists upon escorting her home. When she come to his farm to work on the float, they start getting to know one another, but after seeing her seemingly put on airs when interacting with fancier folks in town, he thinks that she may be two-faced. However, when he has some rather direct words for her about that, he realizes that he’s hurt her and that she’s actually far more than he originally thought. Jack is a good hero and a great father. Although his directness may have stung Charmaine a little, it also opened her eyes to a few things in her life that needed a bit of changing. Not to mention, his more passionate side and the attention he gives her makes her realize that she shouldn’t settle for anything less in a husband than what Annie and Kate have.

Overall, “Almost a Bride” was a nice wrap-up to this series. I was happy to finally read Charmaine’s story and I think Jack was a good match for her. Theirs is a sweet romance with a few tender moments and no objectionable content to speak of, making it appropriate for most audiences. My only real complaint is that the story just didn’t seem quite long enough. A large part of the plot focuses on Charmaine and her coming to the realization that she’s good enough just the way she is and that she doesn’t have to try so hard. In this regard, her characterization was well done, but I couldn’t help feeling like Jack got a little bit lost in the shuffle. He’s a good and likable character as well, but his characterization doesn’t go quite as deep. Their romance mostly consists of getting to know you moments and a couple of passionate kisses. Because Charmaine waits until close to the end of the story to officially break things off with her other beau, the ending felt rather rushed with Jack’s proposal seemingly coming from out of nowhere. But in spite of the perceived weaknesses, I did still enjoy this novella, and now that I’ve finished the Copper Creek Brides, I look forward to delving into Cheryl St. John’s backlist. Star Rating: ****; Sensuality Rating: 1

His Brother’s Bride by Jenna Kernan - “His Brother’s Bride” is a western romance novella about two people who are grieving the death of the same man. As the black sheep of his family, Nate set out to make his fortune on the western frontier, where he now owns the saloon and hardware store in Colorado City. Before his beloved older brother, Jacob, passed away, Jacob asked Nate to look after his wife, Clara, and daughter, Kitty. Although he has misgivings about bringing the paragon of virtue his brother described in his letters to the wild west and marrying her, Nate ends up going through with it anyway, but he doesn’t feel worthy of her. Little does he know, though, that Clara has a past of her own that she’s not proud of. She agreed to marry Jacob’s brother, because she had no other way to provide for her daughter, but she fears he would reject her if he knew the truth about her. The two must find a way to get past their feelings of inadequacy in order to make a life together.

Nate was frequently the object of his father’s harsh beatings, but Jacob often stood up for him, leaving Nate forever grateful to the big brother whom he idolized. But the kind Jacob became a minister in New York, while Nate went west in search of a different sort of life. He managed to make his fortune by setting up shop in mining towns and now owns the saloon and hardware store in the booming town of Colorado City. Although he’s perhaps engaged in some questionable business practices to get ahead, deep down, he’s a good man who cares about kids and stray cats. However, because of his past and the constant put-downs he received growing up, he doesn’t feel worthy of Clara, whom Jacob described in nothing but the most glowing terms. He also doesn’t think he knows anything about being a husband, so when Clara arrives, he marries her, but keeps his distance even though he’s strongly attracted to her. I generally liked Nate, but felt like he spent a little too much time beating himself up over the past rather than trying to move forward into the future with Clara. Even when she finally comes clean about her own past, he doesn’t really believe her and thinks it’s just a story she concocted to make him feel better. I’m all for a good tortured hero, but he has to be willing to listen to his heroine and have a believable story arc and I didn’t entirely feel that way about Nate.

Clara came from a large family. Her father left them destitute, and in a rather desperate state, she was hoodwinked as a teenager by a smooth talking stranger who promised marriage, but only wanted her to be a prostitute in a brothel he was planning to build. Although we don’t get the details about how it happened, Jacob rescued her from that future and married her himself. Before Jacob died, he told her to go to Nate, that he needed her and would take care of her and Kitty. She arrives in Colorado City to find her prospective groom drunk (Nate isn’t given to drinking as a habit, though. He was just nervous and having second thoughts about marrying her.), which doesn’t leave a great first impression. However, there is sexual chemistry between them, something she’d never really experienced with Jacob, even though she loved him. But when she finds out that Nate was planning to rescind his proposal before she arrived, she thinks he doesn’t want her, and because of her past, she feels just as unworthy of him as he does of her. A part of me sympathized with Clara for all that she’d been through in the past, but much like with Nate, I felt like she was engaging in a little to much self-flagellation. She’d been married to Jacob for several years and he’d never once judged her, so the idea that she seemingly hadn’t experienced any emotional healing at all during that time was a bit too much to be believed. I also didn’t care for her getting the reverend involved in her and Nate’s personal life, and I didn’t necessarily feel like she’d grown much by the end of the story. On the up side, though, she’s a good mother to Kitty.

Overall, “His Brother’s Bride” was a decent story, but it did fall down into the okay range for me. Like I mentioned, I greatly enjoy a good tortured hero or heroine, but I felt like Nate and Clara’s issues were a little too much to address in this short format. Therefore, they didn’t genuinely grow as characters by the end. I felt like they spent too much time mired in their own personal problems and fears of what the other would think about them instead of getting to know one another, given that they were complete strangers who’d just entered into a marriage of convenience. They don’t really communicate well either, tending to make assumptions about the other rather than simply asking questions or engaging in discussion. A part of me understood their fears, but at some point, you just have to man up. Then when Clara finally worked up the courage to tell Nate, he doesn’t want to listen and interrupts her with sexual overtures to try to shut her up, merely continuing on with his false assumptions. Their first (and only) love scene started out with Nate being angry (and rightfully so IMHO) with Clara for going to the reverend behind his back, which was just not to my taste. The scene lacked any real tenderness or emotion, yet Clara likes it more than she’s ever liked sex before, which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’m okay with first love scenes not going perfectly, if I know there will be more to make up for it, but that was it, and it left me very unsatisfied. In addition, the dialogue and emotion throughout were very stilted. The dialog needed more contractions, because as written, it was far too formal for a western setting. And because Nate and Clara spend a large part of this fairly short novella keeping each other at arm’s length, I just didn’t feel much of an emotional connection between them.

“His Brother’s Bride” wasn’t a bad story per se, but it simply didn’t float my boat the way I wanted it to. This novella is the second in Jenna Kernan’s Winter Wild West Weddings Christmas novella series, but as far as I can tell, this is a themed series rather than one with common character connections. I’m also guessing that the author rewrote parts of it before releasing it as a separate ebook, because the version I read in this anthology has neither a winter setting nor a Christmas theme. Star Rating: ***1/2; Sensuality Rating: 3
Review provided by The Hope Chest Reviews