Avon, $5.99, ISBN 0-380-80693-2
Historical Romance, 2000
I really don’t want to be mean. I want to be nice and earn my brownie points in heaven, really. But when a book so full of awkward storytelling, predictably hammy characters, and not an iota of fun… it’s not my fault, so don’t look at me like that.
Callista Warwick wants to be a good reporter. Traveling with her mother in the company of soldiers to Fort Bowie to join her army father, she sees this traveling through Apache Territory a chance of a lifetime for adventure and big news. But then the Apaches attack, and our hero Britton Chance rides in like an avenging angel to save the women from a fate worse than death. Or maybe not – the story does continue, doesn’t it?
Brit is the typical been-hurt-before aloof silent type who is attracted to Miss Starch Warwick. The same old routine ensues – they feel this chemistry (or so I’m told, I can’t sense anything in this story except a need to yawn), but she won’t when he wants to, he won’t when she wants to, so everyone thinks wrongly about the other.
Brit suspects Callista’s father of selling guns to the Apaches. But Callista is the typical, irrational “My father! NO NO NO NO NO NO! I hate you for even suggesting it!” sort of ninny, so Brit is torn. Tell her or boink her?
In the meantime, Callista gets into all sorts of accidents. Tripping over applesauce in an attempt to be cute, for instance. Or putting on a Dopey on dope helpless waif act. Asserting her independence while bungling her way into trouble. And of course, the indispensable ability to shed tears and go “I can’t! I can’t! Brit, I can’t!” when circumstances demand that she grow a spine.
Did I mention the the boring suitor of the heroine? I’ll leave whoever interested in reading this book to guess what happens to poor Lt Fowler.
Brit’s Lady is a complete yawner of a romance, an example of how things can get really annoying when an author uses characters so familiar and predictable in an overused setting and a plot so overdone that the result is probably an all-time low when it comes to originality and entertainment.
