Wednesday, March 11, 2009

The Princess Goes West by Nan Ryan ***

This is my 3rd book by this author. I picked one up in the Portal Library Sale, which I liked (You Belong To My Heart), and I got one on audio book, which I found just average (Dearest Enemy). I don't see Ryan mentioned in Romance blogs and forums, so I'm not sure what others think about her. This one - well, I had great hopes for it and I thought it started out well, but as it went on, it became sorta average, and then the ending just was flat for me, and it dropped from a potential 5 star read to a 3 star at best.

This one is a sort of mistaken identity story - it made me think of Susan Andersen's Baby I'm Yours, where a bounty hunter grabs the wrong twin sister and drags her on a road trip back to jail. Virgil Black is a Texas Ranger in 1880 when he's given the job of catching the Queen of the Silver Dollar, an actress from Las Cruces, New Mexico and an accomplice in a robbery. But the tip he's given instead leads him to Princess Marlena of some fictional European country who was touring America looking for support for her country. She had fallen ill, and was recuperating while the Queen of the Silver Dollar filled in for her.

Marlena, a true spoiled brat, fought Virgil as hard as she could, but eventually - as must always happen on road trip romances - the two of them gave into the smoldering chemistry between them while in the New Mexico desert.

It was fun at first, and I had some laughs while reading it. But the story went flat when the truth about her look-alike comes out. It was another Big Mis which just wrapped up all the loose ends a little too quickly (in spite of it being about 400 pages).

This one fits the Western category of the Spring 2009 Challenge.

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