Barbara L. (Barbllm) reviewed on 4/28/2013 + 241 more book reviews

After reading through another in the Long Tall Texans romance series, I cant tell if I should be angry at Diana Palmer for writing such a bad novel or angry at myself for wasting an hour reading it.

Plain Keely Walsh is in love with her friend Clarks brother, Boone Sinclair, a handsome rancher. As the book begins, Keely is 19 and Boone is 30. As the parent of a 17-year-old, I would drop-kick a 30-year-old man who came sniffing around my daughter. Are there really no other women closer to his age that he can date? Keely is a veterinary technician and she earns Boones gratitude when she realizes that his beloved dog is suffering from bloat. And while Boone might actually like Keely, he instead insults and demeans her. And Clark uses Keely as a decoy when trying to date a gold-digging slut named Nellie.

Keelys story is a Cinderella story of sorts: her mother is a crude, obnoxious alcoholic who is hiding a deep, dark secret from her daughter; her father is heavily in debt to a drug dealer who now wants to collect, but Keely and her mother have no money, her mother having spent or sold it all. A snake bite, of all things, sends Keely to Boones home for recuperation. Keelys only friends are Boones siblings, Clark and Winnie. What angered me so much is that when Boone proves himself a noble man, he admits that hed underestimated Keely. He owns up to insulting her after having been given bad information about her from her alcoholic mother (which then leads to the question of why you would take anything an alcoholic says seriously), but he never apologizes. At no time does he say, Keely, I messed up. I am really sorry for how I treated you. Please forgive me. Is that really so hard to do?

A young woman in her early 20s might not always stand up for herself. But Keelys attitude beggars belief: she allows everyone from her mother to Boone to Clark to her boss to insult her and walk all over her. What kind of man would be attracted to that? Is there something wrong with being smart, beautiful, and a hard worker and still crave the love and affection that comes with a committed relationship?

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