Zebra, $5.99, ISBN 0-8217-7355-0
Historical Romance, 2002

There seems to be something in the West American frontier airs that render too many heroines braindead to the point that they are nothing more than five-year old girls with big breasts. Love’s Journey Home is yet another story with a mentally stunted centerfold babe heroine being molested by a traumatized, dirty Marlboro Man and Jackie Stephens calls it love. If love has journeyed a long way home, the brain fell out of the wagon ten minutes into the journey to be trampled into sticky bits of goo by the wheels.

Meet the twins. No, we’re not talking about two normal twins, and no, we’re not talking about incestuous Siamese lesbian twins either. Apparently when they were born, the birdbrain genes went to our heroine Bianca “Bonka” Rossetti, while the skank genes went to her sister Francesca. Francesca is the slut with the bad boyfriend, while Bonka here, well, she’s Bonka.

Lawman Kane Fairchild, he with the usual My Wife’s Dead and It’s All My and Your Fault nonsense, mistakes Bonka for Francesca and whams! Grabs her and hauls her into his manly embrace. Which isn’t difficult as all that separates Bonka from certain death is the author thoughtfully asking all traffic to steer clear of Bonka when she wanders around like a wide-eyed idiot.

Is Bonka scared? No. Is Bonka telling him that he has the wrong twin? No. She wonders how did her sister get into so much trouble. Oh dear. Is there anything she can do to help Frannie? Maybe she can lie and say that Frannie is just a figment of everybody’s imagination, and that when the full moon hits town, Bonka’s Mrs Hyde personality takes over and goes on a murderous rampage. I wish I am reading that book instead of this one, because Bonka is one of those heroines who, in a situation where her very life is threatened, just doesn’t react. She just blinks, acts like the virginal rattlebrained dingbat that she is, and la-la-la’s her way to her deflowering by Kane. Why does she love him? Because he’s so handsome. So ooh, so wow.

I’ve complained before that this author’s previous books have too much Wile E Coyote vs Run Runner action. Now she has stripped those off, leaving me with endless, interminable Bonking the Stupid moments. I want Road Runner and Wile E Coyote back. Yes, I know it will take the sun and the moon to please me, but really, I would prefer hilarious action sequences to reading about our perpetually stupid heroine’s private part inspection by Dr Kane here.