Dashing Luke Palmer is more than he appears though. He's a Texas Ranger working undercover to infiltrate a notorious gang of train robbers. Repairing telephones and tangling with this tempestuous woman is the last thing he wants to do. But when his stakeout puts Georgie in peril, he realizes more than his job is on the line.
Comment: Deeanne Gist is a familiar author to me. I have enjoyed her books more or less although the last one I read by her, last year, wasn't my favorite at all. I had good expectations for this one, though, as I do about other books by her I'll want to try as well. This was a good story despite the less than interesting parts for me...
In this book we meet Georgie Gail, a telephone operator, before each telephone line was fixed to a different house. So everyone who wanted to call somebody else, had to call a central and then the call would be forwarded. Georgie is the first woman to have that job in the Texas city where the action takes place.
Luke Palmer is an undercover Texas Ranger looking for Frank Comer, a bandit who has gained people's applause because of his attitude when robbing trains but he is still a criminal and the bane of Luke's career. Knowing Comer's band will be around that city, makes Luke get there and try to find out ore about who might belong to the gang. But he was not counting on Georgie...
Like I said, this was a good story but I confess it did take some time to read it. I think I wasn't in the right state of mind and it just happened to be Easter season, always a busy time at work, which doesn't allow me as much free time to read as usual.
My biggest issue with this book was the relationship between the main characters. I know this is a Christian themed story but all intimacy references aside, the relationship still didn't look as interesting as it could simply because their connection doesn't feel natural. Plus, we don't see them interact as much as it would be necessary to make me believe in them. I can't say why this bothered me in this book when it didn't in some of her older titles which happen more or less the same, but maybe because of everyone around them was acting, I got this impression, who knows...
When I say "everyone around them", I mean the secondary characters. I just wasn't interested in most of them so the whole feel of community or family or even personal development didn't strike me as something to be focused on, so...I could be easily distracted, which added to not having as much free time, made this a slightly boring read.
Although overall, I still think this story is better when it comes to main characters' relationship, it still didn't win me over after all details were put into consideration.
The plot has its moments, I liked the elements about the German traditions, about birds (Georgie loves them and this is a key part of the story) and even the telephone operations, which tells me the author has had fun researching and including this in the story. But the characters themselves just... I can't explain it, but they were rather bland.
Then we have some revelations closer to the end of the book but I wasn't impressed by them.
I think we didn't learn enough about Georgie. It's hinted often about her having moved to this city, she's an independent woman and that's huge for the time, which I liked, but why she moved we don't know.
Luke is a character I feel we got to understand and know better but the epilogue shows a side of him that doesn't really match what he keeps defending through the book (like why he is dedicated and so on) and I can understand why, it suits the HEA perfectly but...it just feels weird.
All in all, a good and entertaining novel, but when compering to some of her other books, not as impressive. I hope the other books by her I want to read are more in the lines of her best work.
Grade: 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment