Jennifer Bryce

From LibraryThing's Early Reviewers January 2015 batch in exchange for a review.

Set in 1948, this is a gentle romance where Hayley escapes from her abusive father after he loses her in a bet to another abusive man (Ed Thompson). Short of money, she rapidly gets hired by the Sherwoods to look after the youngest member of the family, and essentially keep house for a working ranch. Ben and Tate, two of the Sherwood brothers start vying for her attention and she has to choose between Ben, who is a big town doctor, and Tate, the down to earth rancher. Her new life is threatened by Ed finding out where she is, and coming to claim what he thinks is his. Meanwhile Haley gets to learn more about herself and others - such as not all men are nasty violent drunks, not all American Indians are bad people (and have been treated quite badly by the whites).

This wasn't an overtly Christian (a complaint from another reviewer) but it does have some Christian-morals - no one's sleeping around, the closest they get is kissing under the kissing tree etc. Drinking is bad, Haley's father gets his redemption and Ed gets his "just" reward. Tate and Haley are the most three dimensional characters in the story and the secondary characters are a little one dimensional.
In Summary, it's an ok story, some of the characters were ok, but not the best or strongest story I've read.… (mehr)

Ugh. No, just no. To start with, I have no clue when this is supposed to be set - hand-hoeing cotton and "sparking" really don't work with "solar energy" and "stomach cancer". Haley makes up her mind to run at least three different times, and she's still there until she's almost killed, with no mention of previous decisions. If there had even been a "she wavered in her mind" stuck in there somewhere, it would have been better. And just what happened to the cow in the burning barn? No noise from her as she apparently burned to death - and no thought of her from Haley. And then Tate saves a girl from rape - and his immediate thought is to hover over her and "court" her. That was the last straw for me - I couldn't go on at that point. There might have been a sweet romance coming, but I couldn't handle the story at that point. It wasn't helped by the fact that after the first couple of chapters, the editing got seriously lazy (I don't care if it's an ARC, it should be cleaner than that). Missing words, doubled words, words that were not what was intended - there was a LOT of work needed to make it readable. Never mind the simple typos. If the story had been better, I could have tolerated the editing. If the editing had been better...the story still would have been too wavery, random, repetitive, and anachronistic. No thanks.… (mehr)