At Twilight

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing romance
Review: Adventure, mystery, a historical setting are all attributes that combine to make this romance intriguing and fun to read. Discover the background, goals, motives, and desires of the main characters J.W. Walford and Louisa Burgess as their lives cross paths in East Texas shortly after the Civil War. Follow their relationship as they form a pact that takes them to San Antonio. Each of them has his/her own agenda. These agendas will surely affect any long term relationship that could develop. Find out where Tess Ramsdale, Claire, Morgan, Dalhart, and Diamond fit it and affect the outcome of this novel. A good read for the summer!

Rating:
Summary: engaging western romance
Review: In the 1868 Piney Woods area of East Texas, J. W. Walford kills Uriah Roane in the Lone Tree Saloon, is arrested and convicted of murder, but got a break due to some siblings freeing their brother enabling him to escape too. Now J.W. is fleeing the law when he comes across a small ranch. He stops to buy a horse only to find an unconscious woman and her infant. He provides aid to the drugged woman who awakens and informs him that she is Louisa Burgess and introduces him to her baby Angelina. She also says that she is on the run from odious banker Titus Gillette who is using her late husband's gambling debts to try to blackmail the beautiful woman into doing his bidding.

J.W. takes Louisa and her child across the state on a four hundred mile trek as he seeks vengeance. However, as they journey together, J.W. and Louisa fall in love. As he reconsiders his priorities to keeping his two cherished females safe, Titus has sent a killer after them.

This engaging western romance may sound like an overdone theme, but Beth Henderson freshens up her plot due to the baby making the trek that much more difficult. The story line is action-packed yet character driven as the lead couple has demons (real and imaginative) to overcome before they might pursue their inner feelings. Similar to Three Godfathers with a romantic twist, this is a fine redemption tale that readers will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: One of her best
Review: Loved it, loved it, loved it! One of the gentlest, most tender romances I've ever read. You'll care about Louisa and J.W. and their journey from the first words, their first thoughts, their first steps. I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: One of her best
Review: Loved it, loved it, loved it! One of the gentlest, most tender romances I've ever read. You'll care about Louisa and J.W. and their journey from the first words, their first thoughts, their first steps. I couldn't put it down.

Rating:
Summary: enjoyable read.
Review: Since I love civil war era books, this one was an easy purchase. It's post civil war with the male lead and his sister trying to find the confed. raiders who killed j.w.'s wife and raped tess. The kansas massacre is well documented, tragic event of the civil war. The characters were wonderful. Louisa was the epitome of poor little, tough girl trying to save herself and her baby from first a nasty husband and then an evil man.J.W. is systematically finding the raiders with his sister "diamond"s help. The story has a different approach to a basic premise. While I enjoyed the book, I only rated it a 3 or 3+ because I felt the characters weren't delved into early enough. We're halfway into the book before we find out that tess was raped. We never find out the hero's family background in any depth as he doesn't want to talk about it. The other critique I have is that the "spouses" that were grieved over become flawed. Tess's yankee husband becomes a fun loving, irresponsible person until he faces the ravages of war. Lou's husband was nice for 1 day and then turns into a nasty, drunk outlaw. J>W>'s wife who he adores enough to get revenge for becomes a bit self absorbed and not very maternal to their sickly baby. Now they each find this perfect love...and one wonders how they made such bad choices to begin with. It just doesn't quite pass the believability test. But I think this is henderson's first book......and she sure shows a lot of promise. I'll be checking her next book out. As I said, this was enjoyable but not a keeper in my book.