1 out of 5 stars
Welcome to Hope Falls where three enterprising young females are accepting applications for husbands-for-hire. With one woman already snagged, Lacey Lyman is one of only two remaining. No one really catches her eye until a handsome hunter arrives. Will Lacey find a way to bag her prey? Determined to investigate why Hope Falls’s mine collapsed, Chase Dunstan poses as a potential husband and a hunter, giving him the perfect excuse to poke around inside and outside of town. If only he could get the chatterbox Lacey Lyman off his trail. Can he keep his cover while solving the mystery of the mine?
I have to start this review by stating that I couldn't finish this book. I managed to get about 70% through it before I stopped trying to get interested in it. For whatever reason, this novel couldn't capture my interest at all. The premise did, but not the story-telling itself.
I found the first five chapters of the book are very confusing. It felt like the author introduced too much information at once. For those of us who haven't read the first book in the Husbands for Hire series, it was a lot of information to take in.
I didn't feel like the motives and stakes were enough to compose any kind of conflict (again, I didn't read the first book in this series, so that might be part of the problem). I'm still not sure why the hero needed to solve the mystery about the mine collapse. Since he isn't any kind of sheriff, and only a ranger, it didn't make too much sense to me. The story almost makes you think, by the way it starts off, that he is in law enforcement. But he's not.
To be honest, those first five chapters were so confusing that my head spun trying to digest the story. Too much happened way too fast. In addition, tension-filled scenes that the author clued us into as an important moment were cut off before the very events took place that the author built up to. Those moments were completely skipped, then the event itself appeared only in passing dialogue, merely telling us what transpired.
There were also moments where this story would stop in a scene, take us to another scene, then several chapters later it would take us back to the the scene where we left off. By that time, I'd forgotten about that scene!
Again, the beginning of this novel introduced way too many characters. The novel held far too many view points, as well--some that held no significance to the plot.
The characters, overall, didn't strike me as memorable. In fact, the ones that truly stuck out in mind were Lacey's brother and his fiance. Other than that, nothing in this story held my interest.
I know that Kelly Eileen Hake is a skilled writer, so I'm not sure why this novel came out the way it did. It could be a combination of several things that meshed together.
I really wanted to enjoy this novel, but I couldn't.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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I have to start this review by stating that I couldn't finish this book. I managed to get about 70% through it before I stopped trying to get interested in it. For whatever reason, this novel couldn't capture my interest at all. The premise did, but not the story-telling itself.
I found the first five chapters of the book are very confusing. It felt like the author introduced too much information at once. For those of us who haven't read the first book in the Husbands for Hire series, it was a lot of information to take in.
I didn't feel like the motives and stakes were enough to compose any kind of conflict (again, I didn't read the first book in this series, so that might be part of the problem). I'm still not sure why the hero needed to solve the mystery about the mine collapse. Since he isn't any kind of sheriff, and only a ranger, it didn't make too much sense to me. The story almost makes you think, by the way it starts off, that he is in law enforcement. But he's not.
To be honest, those first five chapters were so confusing that my head spun trying to digest the story. Too much happened way too fast. In addition, tension-filled scenes that the author clued us into as an important moment were cut off before the very events took place that the author built up to. Those moments were completely skipped, then the event itself appeared only in passing dialogue, merely telling us what transpired.
There were also moments where this story would stop in a scene, take us to another scene, then several chapters later it would take us back to the the scene where we left off. By that time, I'd forgotten about that scene!
Again, the beginning of this novel introduced way too many characters. The novel held far too many view points, as well--some that held no significance to the plot.
The characters, overall, didn't strike me as memorable. In fact, the ones that truly stuck out in mind were Lacey's brother and his fiance. Other than that, nothing in this story held my interest.
I know that Kelly Eileen Hake is a skilled writer, so I'm not sure why this novel came out the way it did. It could be a combination of several things that meshed together.
I really wanted to enjoy this novel, but I couldn't.
I received a complimentary copy of this book from Barbour Publishing, via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review.
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Tall, Dark, and Determined
About the Author
Kelly Eileen Hake is a reader favorite of Barbour Publishing's Heartsong Presents book club, where she released several of her first books. A Credentialed secondary English teacher in California with an MA in Writing Popular Fiction, she is known for her own style of witty, heartwarming historical romance.
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