I don’t usually comment on books that I can’t give 100% thumbs up on because what’s the point. However, this one is an interesting craft situation, and I definitely don’t regret reading it.

That Last Night in Texas is a Harlequin SuperRomance that I received as part of the “We Hear You” reader feedback program. The way this works is they send me books and then I have to answer a survey within a specified time limit. Otherwise, considering how rocky my NaNo has been going, I might have waited a month to read them.

This is also the novel I was reading during the Harlequin So You Think You Can Write one-week intensive that I was doing while doing NaNo.

And finally, this is also the book that I read the first half of in a chunk instead of doing either NaNo or SYTYCW because I got so caught up in it.

That Last Night is a traditional category romance with both the rediscovery of an old relationship (one of my favorite themes) and an unknown child. The conflicts are believable and interesting, spanning an overbearing father, differences in social strata, and one trying to protect the other by rejecting them. The plot is well handled for the majority of the book, and has a fascinating setup as the old love appears on the horizon ostensibly to show them up but really because he’s never forgotten Cassie despite wandering the globe in an effort to put the past behind him. That’s complicated enough, but Ethan has another surprise waiting for him. Cassie married the man her father had chosen for her after all and apparently had a child with him. The truth is that they went through an amicable divorce because Cassie has never been able to love her husband, but that adds to the problems when Ethan realizes Donny is his son not Josh’s, because the boy is already going through the confusion of his parents splitting.

What follows is a high tension dance around what’s right for everyone involved while the old feelings threaten to undermine Cassie’s objectivity. Ethan never had any to start with.

I’d say 90% of the time that tension is maintained and I was right there with the characters trying to balance their needs against each other’s and determine how best to have this all come out. 90%.

The reason I can’t recommend the novel wholeheartedly is because it lost me for about a chapter or two in the middle. Honestly, it read as though the book needed a little more length so Cassie pulls back and drops into obstinacy after she’s well past that point in my mind. What makes that an interesting craft situation is the balance, the juggling act a romance requires, is very delicate. The author needs to keep the reader involved and pulling for often both contradictory sides.

That engagement is what makes romances compelling. The stories on the surface are quite bland. It’s how the characters bring the tales to life that makes reading romances something I’ve enjoyed since the early 80s when I first discovered them. It’s why breaking the absorption is a problem, and almost spoiled the book for me. The only reason it didn’t is that a couple chapters later, things started heating up again tension wise with the introduction of another character who brings nothing but trouble.

The only other issue I had was an implied continuity flaw where it’s clear in the beginning that Cassie is afraid of horses, and chooses between walking or driving when on a horse ranch. Then later, she comes riding up to Ethan and there’s no real reaction to that fact.

Still, despite the human tendency to remember only the bad parts over the good, my reaction to is that I enjoyed it. There were complex, tangled relationships that spoke to love, respect, and friendship. Even more some of the differences that seemed irreconcilable came together by the end in realistic, not candy and lollipops everything’s dandy ways, showing Ann Evans to be a talented writer regardless of the rough spots. ( )