Wanted: A Family Forever (Silhouette Romance , No 1309)

Rating:
Summary: Doesn't live up to its billing.
Review: Somewhere I saw this book described as a sweet story of two wounded souls giving love a second chance. Unfortunately it just ain't so. Our hero is a reclusive pilot dealing with his tremendous guilt over the death of his young daughter, but he spends a surprising amount of his time being a jerk. Our heroine is the recently-divorced mother of a traumatized, withdrawn little girl. She is on the run from her ex-husband, who is trying to have the little girl institutionalized so that he can gain access to her trust fund. His hovering presence darkens much of the story. It never became clear to me whether the little girl was supposed to have a developmental disability or not, the two main characters spent way too much time at odds with each other, and the ending, which happened IMMEDIATELY after their discovery of their mutual love, was much too abrupt.
All that said, some of the minor characters (the heroine's father and the hero's Inuit housekeeper, for instance) are intriguing. But the real hero of this book is the Malumute named Zeus. Really.