Don’t talk to strangers…

Just finished To Love A Stranger by Connie Mason and I was left somewhat conflicted. I couldn’t decide if I was happy the hero and heroine ended up together, or just relieved that their saga was finally over. Either way, what started out enjoyable ended up as a torturous quest to finish what I had started.

Zoey (female lead) though plucky, is a little too stubborn for even my taste, and I like a little strong independence in female characters. Pierce (male lead) is a little too jaded about the opposite sex. I guess if my mother had run away from me and my first wife had left me for her former lover after I had discovered that she had not been as chaste as she had let on, I might be just as wary about future encounters with women. But even in that light, it seems just stubborn and foolish to exclaim that ALL women were schemers and out to get him. It comes off a little paranoid too.

The premise was strong enough, he was in a root cellar, she nurses him back to health from a near fatal gunshot wound. She blackmails him into a marriage of convenience to save her farm, that he wants to inconvenience by claiming his marriage rights cause he’s a man and wants to get laid and figures its the least she could do to pay him back for his “sacrifice” at having to break his vow to remain unmarried the rest of his life.

Yeah, well, there was a little too much wishy washiness between the leads in the story. Zoey and Pierce spent too much time fighting their natural attraction, and what time they could have spent cultivating it was quickly outweighed by his incarceration by the vigilante squad. Isn’t absence supposed to make the heart grow fonder? And not steel it further against love’s persuasive attack at old ideals and beliefs? Yeah, I thought so too…I guess that doesn’t apply in the world of the Delaney’s. This is the first book in the trilogy of the three overly jaded women shy brothers.