Avon, $7.99, ISBN 978-0-06-238904-6
Historical Romance, 2018
Regan Carmichael graduated top of the class in Oberlin. Actually, that’s putting it mildly – she’s said to have broken all academic records there. She’s the smartest! The best! So, she’s moving to Wyoming, where women have the right to vote… to be a mother of some grouchy moron’s daughter. I’d think Beverly Jenkins would give Regan a more interesting story, given the heroine’s supreme intellect, but I suppose it just won’t do for women to aim so high in life.
My problem with this story begins when Regan is traveling to her new home after accepting Dr Colton Lee’s mail order bride proposal. The coach is attacked by bandits, and one person dies as a result. Our heroine, meanwhile, takes out her Winchester and goes pew-pew like the Terminator Everything Lady that she is. Right immediately after the bandits are repelled, the coach driver begins smiling and acting like Regan marrying Colton is the funniest thing ever. All this while, I’m thinking, “Dead guy. Does anyone care?”
The sheriff and Colton show up and Regan, thinking that the bandits are back for an encore, shoots a warning, only to hit Colton in the shoulder.
Colton takes this very personally, and starts assuming that Regan is the worst thing ever to crawl out of a hole to stink up his life. His late wife was the perfect lady! How dare this… thing with a gun and all dare to think she can take his precious Adele’s place?
Look, if this place has a bandit issue, I’d think he’d be happy that his daughter’s stepmother knows how to use a gun. Secondly, does he expect a woman to act all demure and ladylike when under the threat of assault and worse by bandits? Is this man mad? I guess so, as this “Regan is no lady and certainly not good enough to replace my dead wife!” nonsense is a conflict that goes on and on. Meanwhile, his mean grandfather tries to make life hell for Regan just because – old men are so cute that. Adele’s great-aunt tries to do the same as well, but that woman is definitely not cute because she’s a woman and we romance readers don’t like other women who aren’t the heroine so, ugh, disgusting.
Meanwhile, the characters of previously related books as well as various townsfolk warm up to Regan because why not? She can do everything and anything, except aspiring to be something more than a mother and wife. Hence, I have here a headscratcher of a story which has the very nice, kind, talented, capable, loving, devoted, et cetera heroine being a perfectly acceptable person, so the hero comes off as super dense to keep finding her lacking as a “lady”. He is also curt, rude, runs away from confrontations, sulks, and generally behaves like the skunk in a room of otherwise okay people, stinking up the joint and yet I’m supposed to like him because every other character in this story insists that he is actually a nice guy. Colton is a moron unfit to scrape off the gum stuck on the sole of my shoe, and it pains me that he’s supposed to be seen as a worthy match for Regan.
Regan is a pretty flat heroine – she’s almost one-dimensional in how she has very few flaws, just lots and lots of awesomeness with sassy sauce on top. I wonder what kind of message is the author trying to tell me by making her fall in love with that twat. Then again, the author also pulls that tired trick of making every other guy that has ever crossed Regan’s life to be wanting in some way, so Colton is basically the one by default.
Oh, and the story is boring. The author focuses on Regan going about town being awesome, sequel baits telling me non-stop how Colton and Regan are meant to be, some drama to fill up the pages – pages that I feel could have been used to allow Regan and Colton to talk more and convince me that their romance is a good thing, and various characters walking in and out of the story without making any significant impact to the overall story arc.
Tempest, therefore is boring on top of having a romance that feels so mismatched to the core. It also doesn’t help that characters often react to danger as if they had just been bitten by a mosquito or something equally trivial. Did they even bury that dead guy I mention at the start of the story? In this story, people start cracking jokes and focusing on trivial things even if they have just escaped with their lives, and the last thing this story needs is characters that behave illogically. But they are here, along with the cringe-inducing romance and the boring non-happenings in the story. I just don’t like this one at all.
