Avon, $5.99, ISBN 0-380-81021-2
Historical Romance, 1999

I have a feeling those who enjoy An Unlikely Outlaw must have a high – and I mean high – tolerance of heroines who have pea shells for brains. Heroine Jasmine Jamison steals the sheriff’s badge because she thinks it will be a great lark to go around scaring people. Good thing she doesn’t bump into a group of hooligans with rapine in their minds. Daddy decides that missus has gone one step too far and orders her to get married in a month or it’s off to those etiquette school in Boston for Jasmine. Jasmine thinks marriage is the worst thing this side of life (beats me why she thinks that way), so she decides to get herself compromised by an outlaw. Hopefully he will abandon her afterwards. Never mind that she will be ruined. She won’t get married, and that’s a good thing right?

And get this – our heroine’s twenty-four.

My first thought upon realizing this is, “Your poor girl, what did they do to you as a child?”

Our outlaw hero, Brody McClintock, is actually a good guy with a mission, but he is soon harrying after Jasmine as the wretch runs off from one dumb adventure to another.

And in the end when Brody declares that this troublesome 10-year-old trapped in a 24-year old woman’s body is “all that he ever wanted” I think he must have a hankering to be a babysitter.

I still haven’t recovered from reading such a badly developed, cliched-ridden story with one of the most immature and nincompoop women this side of Wild West. Other readers should check their brainless heroine tolerance threshold before turning to page one.