Saturday, August 14, 2010

With Heart by Dorothy Garlock ****

This book is a little different from the romance books I usually read because it's historical, set in the 1930s USA during the depression. It's actually the 3rd book in a series, but worked well enough as a stand alone in a 2-book collection.

In this one, Kathleen Dolan - a writer/journalist - moves to a small town in Oklahoma where she has invested in the small-town newspaper. She meets Johnny Henry and the two of the spend the book trying to avoid falling in love. Johnny's problems are multiple -he's a "half breed" (actually, I think he's only a quarter because when his father is revealed, I recall he was a half breed). His mother was a whore and his father just a kid sowing his wild oats, who didn't even know until many years later that he had fathered a child with this woman.

In addition to the attraction between the 2, the book has a number of other memorable characters and a scary suspense story involving the town doctor. Not real scary, and I figured the mystery out pretty early on.

I liked it pretty good, and kept reading past the end so I could learn "the rest of the story" because the second book is also different. I give it 4 stars, mainly because I did care for the characters. I didn't love it though because the bad guys were really just caricatures, not fully fleshed out human beings with faults.

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