Review - - Indigo Lake

Indigo Lake
By Jodi Thomas

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: July 18, 2017
Reviewed by Janga

 

The Hamilton and Davis families have a history—a century of feuding that has dwindled to little more than dark tales of violent death, lingering ghosts, and ancient curses since the only survivors of the two families are a rootless stranger who has never set foot on Hamilton land and two sisters, struggling to get by, and to care for their Apache-Irish grandmother who keeps the stories of the feud alive.

Blade Hamilton never knew his father, and he is shocked to learn that the man has left him Hamilton Acres, overgrown land that used to be the family ranch, and the ancestral house, which looks like a setting for a horror movie. Blade grew up with a wandering mother who reinvented herself with each successive husband and whose emotional ties to her son were almost nonexistent. All he knew about his father was his name. He has never called any place home, a habit reinforced by his military service and his current job as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Other than a certain curiosity, he has no feelings about the land he has inherited. His plans are to sell the property, which he guesses is less worth than the vintage motorcycle on which he rode into Crossroads, Texas.

Dakota Davis delayed her plan to become an architect five years ago when her mother was killed in an automobile accident that left Maria, Dakota’s older sister, blind. Dakota was only twenty, but she grew up in a hurry. With her mother dead, her grandmother inhabiting her own version of reality, and Maria recovering in the hospital, Dakota became head of the family. Now she supports her small family by working as Crossroads' only real estate agent. Her income is supplemented by the sale of Maria’s homemade jellies and jams. At night, she studies architecture and dreams of the houses she longs to build. Between her job, her studies, acting as errand girl for Maria’s growing business, and keeping an eye on her grandmother, Dakota has no time to regret her nonexistent social life. When she first sees Blade, she thinks he is a Hamilton ghost, but it takes only one meeting for him to become fully flesh and blood and a major irritant, albeit one who is too good-looking for his own good—or for hers.

Blade expects to be in town for only two weeks. He is not interested in permanence, and Dakota is not his type anyway--or so he keeps telling himself. Dakota doesn’t have time for the complication that is Blade, and she is still half certain that the only safe Hamilton is a dead one. But she can’t stop thinking about Blade. Then, the push-pull of their relationship takes a turn when Blade is shot after he is deputized by Sheriff Dan Brigman who has a double murder and other suspicious activities to investigate. Can a wandering Hamilton with no home and a hot-tempered Davis solidly rooted in her home have a future together?

Meanwhile, Lauren Brigman has returned to Crossroads still in search of herself and her purpose in life. She publishes an online community newspaper, considers other things she might write, and spends a lot of time thinking about her might-have-been-but-never-was love affair with Lucas Reyes. Lucas, now a successful lawyer, believes he is a danger to Lauren and tries to stay away from her, a task made easier when he insists that Lauren’s father lock him up in the local jail as suspect #1, even though no one really believes honorable Lucas is the murderer. The bad guys are caught, and lots of Crossroads characters prove themselves heroes. But after a dozen years of the on and off (mostly off) of Lauren and Lucas, can this pair finally find happiness together?

Jodi Thomas has long been one of the best storytellers writing romance, and she has the awards to prove it, including a spot in the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. Her Harmony series is one of my all-time favorites, and I have enjoyed the earlier Ransom Canyon novels. Indigo Lake is the sixth book in that series, and I’m of two minds about it. I loved Blade and Dakota. Thomas is unique among the authors whom I read regularly in her gift for creating off-beat characters who qualify as outsiders. The twists and quirks in these characters and their stories’ underlying affirmation that everyone deserves to love and be loved has kept me reading Thomas for many years. Blade and Dakota are part of this tradition. They are appealing as individuals, and as a couple, they offer satisfied sighs and smiles. Since I have followed the series, I also enjoyed seeing some favorite characters from earlier books play a role in book six. Charley Collins (Lone Heart Pass) is at the top of that list.

If the novel consisted only of Blade and Dakota’s story, I’d rank it a solid four-star read. But there is also Lauren and Lucas’s story. It was a major disappointment. These are characters that readers met in Ransom Canyon, the first book in the series. Across the series, readers have seen them move from high school to college to post-college work. Many have viewed them as a couple meant to be together, but Lucas’s determination to achieve has delayed any significant connection again and again. I’m sure I am not the only reader who was invested in their story and rooting for their HEA. Theirs was the story I wanted to love. Instead I found the story’s development thin, and Lauren distressingly passive. By the end, I was largely indifferent to what happened to them.

A more minor concern was my confusion about Dakota’s history. The family land and the Davis feud with the Hamiltons came through her mother’s line. Dakota and Maria use their mother’s maiden name. I’m not sure why. It is unclear what happened to the girls’ father. At one point, Dakota’s thoughts reveal that he is dead: “Her father died young, trying to farm rocky, uneven terrain.” Later she says to her grandmother, “My father is not dead. At least not that I know of. He just left us the month after I was born, remember?”  I read the book twice and did a dedicated search of the words “father” and “Davis” and was unable to find answers to my questions. I should add that I read an ARC, and it is possible that contradictions were resolved in the final copy. As I said, this is not a major point, but such details can drive me batty. :)

Overall, this is not the best book in the series, but Blade and Dakota make it worth reading nonetheless. If you have read the earlier books, the positive will outweigh the negatives. You should add the book to your list. If you are new to the series, start with Ransom Canyon. Maria Davis, an interesting, endearing character, will be the heroine of a novella, A Christmas Affair (October 1), and I’ll definitely be reading that one. Thomas begins a new series in the spring. I look forward to that as well.

Today's Special - - Jodi Thomas Wild Horse Springs Tour

Wild Horse Springs

By Jodi Thomas

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: January 24, 2017

  

Jodi Thomas takes her readers back to Crossroads, Texas, for the fifth book in her Ransom Canyon series. Sheriff Dan Brigman has devoted himself to protecting the citizens of his town and to his daughter Lauren, but with Lauren on her own in Dallas after college, he is newly aware of the empty spaces in his life. No one would ever think that a blue, rhinestone-studded cowgirl boot in the middle of the highway would be the key to adventure and romance for a lonely lawman, but so it proves to be. Tracking down the boot’s owner leads Dan to Brandi Malone, a gorgeous country singer-songwriter who has a two-week gig at a dive just over the county line from Crossroads. From his first sight of her, Brandi has Dan remembering that he is more than a sheriff and a father.

Some might describe Brandi Malone as a drifter as she moves from town to town, performing a couple of weeks in one place before she moves to the next. But Brandi knows she is running from an unbearable loss and from a family in which she was always a misfit. Dan Brigman makes her feel as if she really is the wild, free spirit that he believes her to be. Dan may be just what she needs for the moment, but she and Dan both know that what they are having is a fling not a relationship. However, things have a way of changing when hearts get involved.

Lauren Brigman feels like a failure at twenty-five. After law school, she turned to her dreams of writing rather than take the bar exam, but so far, she is a singularly unproductive writer. Her personal life is no more satisfactory. She has allowed her friends-with-benefits connection with life-long pal Tim O’Grady to continue more from inertia than from affection, and she knows Tim wants more than she can give him. Her heart has never forgotten Lucas Reyes, her first love, but they have lost touch. When Tim calls her with the news that their protégé, eighteen-year-old Thatcher Jones has been arrested, Lauren seizes the opportunity to go home to Crossroads to help Thatcher and to find herself.

Thatcher was only trying to help a little girl who was obviously in trouble, but he ended up in jail, placing the future his benefactors had helped him plan in jeopardy. As if that were not enough, he is kidnapped from his jail cell by the sleaze bags who think he saw too much when he followed the little girl home. Fighting his way free, he finds sanctuary in the home of Cody Winslow, a Texas Ranger and near legend.

Cody is in the hospital recovering from his effort to outrun the demons that have plagued him since the standoff with drug runners that left two of his closest friends dead and Cody on the inactive list. He almost accomplished on his wild night ride in a winter storm what the drug runners had failed to do, but Tess Adams, a Park ranger who was stargazing nearby with a troop of little girls, heard his curses and saved his life. Now Cody is claiming that Tess is his wife and Tess is wondering if that life sentence may be just what she wants most. But before these two can settle their future, they have to protect Thatcher from the thugs who are after him.

Wild Horse Springs is another ensemble romance from gifted storyteller Jodi Thomas. Fans of the Ransom Canyon series will be pleased to see series regular, good-guy sheriff Dan Brigman finally get a romance of his own. Dan’s relationship with Brandi is the central love story, and it develops in stolen moments woven among Dan’s professional duties. Dan and Brandi are older characters who have paid heavy dues, and they easily win the reader’s affection. They deserve their HEA. I only wish that it had been less abrupt and truncated. Cody and Tess are also engaging characters with the kind of quirky appeal that Thomas does so well. Tenderness and humor balance the tension in the relationships of both couples.

Lauren’s future is left open. Lucas is back, but it is unclear exactly where they stand. Whether her friendship with Tim can survive their time as lovers and Lauren’s rejection of him in that role is also unclear. Presumably readers will have answers to these questions as well as more about Thatcher in future novels in the series. The sixth book, Indigo Lake will be released July 18, 2017.

I am a huge fan of Jodi Thomas’s stories that suggest everyone, even the misfits, deserves love and happiness. I always fall in love with her characters who are never cookie-cutter types. Her strengths are clear in this book, but the ending just felt rushed and less satisfying than usual to me. I do recommend Wild Horse Springs to readers who like ensemble romances with a cast of memorable and different characters, but I don’t think this one is quite up to Thomas’s usual stellar work.

 ~Janga

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Jodi Thomas’ TLC Book Tours TOUR STOPS:

Tuesday, January 24th: The Romance Dish

Wednesday, January 25th: Susan Peterson

Thursday, January 26th: Book Reviews and More by Kathy – Excerpt

Friday, January 27th: Patricia’s Wisdom

Monday, January 30th: A Bookaholic Swede – Excerpt

Wednesday, February 1st: From the TBR Pile

Friday, February 3rd: Black ‘n Gold Girl’s Book Spot

Wednesday, February 8th: The Sassy Bookster

Thursday, February 9th: Buried Under Romance – Excerpt and review

Friday, February 10th: A Chick Who Reads

Monday, February 13th: Books a la Mode – Excerpt

Monday, February 13th: Books and Spoons

Wednesday, February 15th: Diary of a Stay at Home Mom

Thursday, February 16th: Bewitched Bookworms

Friday, February 17th: Stranded in Chaos

Monday, February 20th: Books and Bindings

Monday, February 20th: Pretty Little Book Reviews

Tuesday, February 21st: Romantic Reads and Such – Excerpt

Tuesday, February 21st: Becca the Bibliophile

Wednesday, February 22nd: Becky on Books

Review - - Lone Heart Pass

Lone Heart Pass

By Jodi Thomas

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: April 26, 2016

 

Since leaving college, Jubilee Hamilton has focused on building her career as a political campaign manager. When her most recent boyfriend moved out because she had no time to be part of a couple, she hardly missed him. But when her candidate loses the election, the third such loss in Jubilee’s career, she knows that she has hit a dead end. Without career demands to fill her life, she realizes how little she has to show for her twenty-six years. No one in Washington is calling her, she is semi-estranged from her family among whom she has always felt like an outsider, and she has no friends. Her happiest memories are of a summer spent with her great-grandfather on his ranch, so when she learns that Grandpa Levy has died and left Lone Heart Ranch to her, she sets out for Crossroads, Texas.

Charley Collins expected to spend his life managing the Texas land that had been in his family for generations, but one foolish choice led to his wealthy father’s disowning him. With his credit cards cancelled and all money, including tuition payment, cut off, Charley is forced to drop out of college one semester shy of his degree. A single father, he supports himself and his five-year-old daughter Lillie, by a variety of day work and weekend bartending. The latter pays poorly, but it provides the small apartment where he and Lillie live. Charley is running low on hope when Levy Hamilton’s big-city granddaughter offers him a job as foreman for Lone Heart Ranch. He seizes the chance to do work he loves and also to save to buy land of his own in a year or so.

Jubilee and Charley begin as strangers wary of one another and gradually become colleagues with a common cause and then friends. Love catches them unaware, bringing with it more happiness than they dreamed possible and the family for which their hearts long. Part of the joy of the world Thomas creates is that even the minor characters have a presence and an individual identity. This is true of Charley’s daughter Lillie and of Thatcher Jones, a fourteen-year-old who is part eccentric, part philosopher, and part typical adolescent male. He becomes the fourth member of the family Jubilee and Charley create.

Lone Heart Pass is the third novel in Thomas’s Ransom Canyon series, and she does her usual superb job of crafting a compelling story filled with characters who engage readers’ interest and affection. Nobody is better than Thomas at providing credible HEAs for misfits and outsiders. Jubilee and Charley don’t fit the molds of typical romance heroine and hero, but they have an authenticity and courage that endears them to the reader. Their difference is a cause for celebration. I was invested from early in the story in seeing these two find their way to an HEA. Each book in this series has drawn me more deeply into the world of Ransom Canyon, and each visit to that world has been rewarding. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I am already eager to read Sunrise Crossing, the next book in the series (an August 30 release).

If you like contemporary romance with a Texas accent, a richly textured community, and lead characters who will claim a place in your heart and in your memory, add this one to your must-read list for May.

~Janga

Review - - Ransom Canyon

Ransom Canyon

By Jodi Thomas

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: August 25, 2015

 

Jodi Thomas introduces a new series with Ransom Canyon, a Texas-set contemporary western that spotlights Thomas’s deft touch with multiple storylines about the extraordinary lives of ordinary, flawed characters of various ages who struggle with problems in which the reader believes.

Staten Kirkland, a direct descendant of James Kirkland who founded the Kirkland Double K ranch more than a century earlier, is a man who loves his land and takes pride in following in the footsteps of his grandfather and the generations before him. When his sixteen-year-old son was killed in a single-vehicle accident two years after Staten’s wife lost her battle with cancer, the rancher clung to his sanity by a thread. It was the land and his wife’s best friend, Quinn O’Grady that saved him. Five years have passed since his son’s death, but Staten still lives life distanced from his emotions, managing the Double K and visiting Quinn when the storms come.

Quinn is a shy, silent woman who works her small lavender farm and confides in no one. She has known Staten since they were in grade school and has loved him almost as long. She is content to be his sanctuary when the wildness and the need for human contact overwhelm him, but after five years, each time they lie together, she wonders if it will be the last time. It is that uncertainty that prompts her to make a demand for the first time: “From now on . . . when you come to see me, I need you to kiss me goodbye before you go. If I’m asleep, wake me. You don’t have to say a word, but you have to kiss me.” Kissing Quinn is no hardship and Staten complies. Neither of them could have guessed in that moment that so simple a thing as a kiss could start a chain of changes that would alter their lives in dramatic ways.

Lucas Reyes is a part-time ranch hand for the Double K. Just seventeen, he grew up helping his father who works on the Bar W, the ranch that borders the Double K, but as soon as Lucas turned sixteen, he signed up to work when the Double K needed extra cowboys. Kirkland pays a higher wage, and Lucas is saving for college. He plans to finish high school early and have his baccalaureate degree by the time he turns twenty-two. But Lauren Briggman has him thinking about more than work and his collegiate future.

Fifteen and at the top of her sophomore class, Lauren Briggman is more interested in books than in boys, which is a good thing since her father, sheriff of tiny Crossroads, Texas, intimidates the young men who show any indication of interest in her. But Lucas Reyes is not like the other boys she knows. He is more serious, more thoughtful, and more ambitious. When he proves to be the stuff heroes are made of, Lauren knows she wants to be friends with him. When he gives Lauren her first kiss, she realizes how special this friendship is.

Yancey Grey is an ex-con who wandered into Crossroads looking for a stake that would put him on the road to normalcy, something Yancey has never known. But what was supposed to be a brief stop turns into a new life when a group of retired teachers give Yancey a job, a place to live, and people who care about him. Just when Yancey begins to believe a new life can be his, his past smacks him with the old reality. Can Yancey summon the courage to risk everything for his new community?

I’m a huge fan of Jodi Thomas’s Harmony series, and Ransom Canyon strikes familiar notes without being merely the new verse of an old song. Staten and Quinn are wounded souls drawn together initially by shared grief and the need for comfort. Without their being fully aware of it, their relationship shifts and moves in new directions. They are both interesting, sympathetic characters, and the developing relationship captures the reader quickly. I was especially pleased that they are both in their forties, old enough to have survived some devastating blows and young enough to build a new life.

Lucas and Lauren are good kids, hard-working, responsible, and family-loving—the kind who get too little attention in life and in fiction. Lucas, the eldest in a big family, listens to his father’s advice, cherishes his mother’s hugs, and feels no resentment that everything he wants is not handed to him. Lauren is weary of her father’s lectures and is bothered by the noisy clashes between her separated parents, but she is secure in her father’s love. She is even beginning to understand that her mother loves her too. In the early stages of young love, they are sweet and endearing.

Yancey is one of the misfits that Thomas excels at bringing to life. His story has tragic overtones, but the author presents it with considerable humor. There is nothing amusing about his throwaway past or his prison experience, but the mutual adoption that occurs between Yancey and the quirky senior brigade, his careful scrutiny of the townspeople as he studies how to act “normal,” and the budding romance between him and the warrior nurse made me smile.

If you have enjoyed the Harmony books, you will probably enjoy this book as well. If you like stories with colorful but credible characters engaged in several storylines, you should definitely add this one to your list. Thomas remains an auto-buy author for me. I am already eagerly awaiting the second book in the series, Rustler’s Moon, a January 26, 2016 release. Winter Camp, a prequel novella offering the story of Staten’s ancestor James Kirkland and the founding of the Double K, is also available. 

~Janga