Leisure, $5.99, ISBN 0-8439-5083-8
Historical Romance, 2002

Ah, a new author. I hate to do this, but what’s up with all these Leisure and LoveSpell authors and their really ridiculous Western romances? You know the sort, a really stupid city girl crashing into some hicksville town and making the whole world stop turning to save her again and again? No doubt Ms Kenton probably believes that her story is so funny, and the heroine is so-oo-ooo precious, but if I have my way, I will buy me a giant Voltron robot to stamp to death all of those obnoxiously blood-pressure elevating pipsqueak braindead women in the Wild, Wild West.

Seriously, Kyra Dawson Lourdes must die. Bad enough that she is someone engaged to a man whom she sees murdering a woman, she runs off to Texas to search for old friend Cliff Baldwin, a mean bad bounty hunter. Naturally, our heroine loses her money, possessions, and wanders around the street in a daze while I shriek for a wagon to plow her down. Cliff is currently booty-hunting at a brothel called Madame Lucy’s, whom Kyra believes is the grand home of a Frenchwoman, and when she sees all those near-naked prostitutes, she still has no clue.

Kyra decides to cook, with disastrous results! Kyra decides to put a bonnet on a donkey! Kyra walks around alone after the hero has warned her that bad guys are after them both – aaaaahhh! “You’re so smart,” Cliff tells her through adoring moo-moo eyes and I’ve had it.

The only thing that saves Simply Delicious from complete evisceration is the bouncy feel of the prose, and it’s rather infectious. Ms Kenton is obviously having a good time in her roller-coaster ride down to the lowest pits of hellish stupidity, and how nice of her, really. But get the aspirins ready for me at the end of this train ride. I have a feeling that I will need a lot of TLC to get over this ordeal of a book.