Omaha's Bell

Rating:
Summary: Ho-Hum
Review: Granted, the story had it's point but...the characterization needed more work. Keely Delany, local town [person], falls hard for local, blonde, town's do-gooder Prue Morris. So far, so good. But, why, towards the end of the book, does the [book] seem so rushed? The plot falls apart, the charactors seem to unravel and as a reader I ended the book wondering why? It started out so well and just fizzled into a sputter. Good potential. Too bad the [it] couldn't have kept...going.

Rating:
Summary: Fair, but not great
Review: This is a rather trivial story about a woman living outside of Omaha in the late 1800s. She doesn't like the town much, but she does like the woman who runs the restaurant, despite the fact that she has a good woman back on the homestead. The progression of the story is rather mundane. Even the "mystery" of who stole the bell isn't much of a mystery by the end of the book. Some of the dialogue is supposed to reflect the frontier life of the people, but the only down home phrase missing was Aw, shucks. What we need is a library that specializes in loaning out women's novels, so that something like this can be read without having to pay for it.

Rating:
Summary: Lacking Depth
Review: While set in 1880's Omaha at the beginning or the city's life, I never felt a part of the historical setting. The detail is vague, the characters are wooden, inauthentic or stereotypical bad guys. The plot twists are contrived and the love story (as such) leaves me cold. Perhaps if the novel had been spun out for another hundred pages, I might have felt more interest. This was definitely a gloss over novel meant to fill only the strict page guidelines of Naiad Press. I am disappointed as I liked many of the author's earlier works.