I received this book for free from my own shelves in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Source: my own shelves
Falling for Tender Heart
by
Katie Lane
western romance that was published by Amazon Digital Services on April 2, 2017 and has 201 pages.
Explore it on Goodreads or Amazon
Other books by this author which I have reviewed include Make Mine a Bad Boy, Trouble in Texas, Going Cowboy Crazy
First in the Tender Heart, Texas, western romance series and revolving around a love of books, especially an historic western romance series. The couple focus is on Emery Wakefield and Cole Arrington.
My Take
This is a sweet story with some nice twists. Of course, I liked the idea of Emery as an editor who gets caught up in the stories she reads. And I also liked that Dirk and Carly are such rebels that they break into the abandoned diner to cook some decent food.
Poor Emery. She doesn’t fit in anywhere, especially not within her family. Now Dirk, he seems to fit in everywhere, and does he ever push it, lol. My biggest niggle about Dirk is that he seems too young to have done all that he claims, and yet he does appear to truly know.
The major conflict is finding that last book in the series that was never published, and Lane makes good use of it for a variety of other conflicts that revolve around it and the core characters. Yep, Lane has introduced a number of characters whom I just know are going to be getting books of their own. Especially after Savannah’s letting out how controlling Miles is. And one of his keys to controlling her.
It’s third person dual point-of-view switching easily between Emery and Cole, as we listen in on their thoughts and troubles. That Cole sure is stubborn! It gets annoying after awhile with the two of them and their insecurities, but I reckon it’s more like real life. Lord knows I whine to myself a lot. I just don’t wanna read about it.
YES!!! An author who knows when to use “whupped” and not “whooped”!! YES! YES! YES!!
It is a predictable story, and it’ll make a fun beach read. I suspect a lot of my enjoyment came from speculating as to how Kane is going to pull the other characters to Bliss…and when that diner is gonna open *grin*
The Story
It’s a lead! How can Emery ignore the possibility of publishing that lost, last book in the western romance series she adores. The one she practically lives!
Unfortunately, it turns out that the writer of that query doesn’t hold the rights…nor does she hold the real story. With so much riding on the truth, how can Emery save her career, her dream cowboy, and their lives?
The Characters
Emery Wakefield is an editor whose job is in jeopardy. Her family are all geniuses in the medical field. Her father is a psychiatrist, her mother a gynecologist, and her brothers, Jeff and Ryan, are a plastic surgeon and a pharmaceutical scientist, respectively.
The free-wheeling Carly Hanover, a head chef working in San Francisco, and the persnickety Savannah Reynolds, an interior designer with her own business, are her closest friends. Miles is Savannah’s fiancé in Atlanta — and the girls don’t like him. Savannah’s Aunt Fanny was quite precise in her manners.
The town of Bliss, Texas, is…
…where the series was written and set by the author, the Arringtons’ great-aunt Lucy.
Cole Arrington owns the Arrington Ranch, one-third of the original ranch, and is sinking fast. Gracie, a champion barrel racer, is his wheelchair-bound half-sister. Brandy is the skittish mare Gracie used to ride. Their father, Hef, had been a pushover for his runaway wife, Ava.
Zane Arrington is his cousin with another third, the Earhart Ranch, and doing extremely well. He married his high school sweetheart, Rachel. Becky is his wild sister. Indigo is the horse Zane rides. Ghost Rider is the horse Becky is not supposed to ride. Loretta had been their housekeeper/cook forever. Black Bart is one of Zane’s bulls.
Raff is another cousin with the final third, the Tender Heart Ranch, but he’s in jail.
Dirk Handley is a drifter who’s done most everything and knows it all. Mrs. Crawley runs the only hotel in town; Winnie is her daughter, who loves the one she’s with. The one-legged Emmett Daily owns an automotive garage/gas station where Cole works. Emmett’s wife, Joanna, had been a school teacher. Hank, the first bride’s descendant, is the bartender and owner of the Watering Hole, the only place left in town where you can get a beer and well, you can call it food. Mike and Orville are at the bar. Sissy Miller is quite the snob. Doc Sanchez is the local doctor who is treating Gracie. Pastor Milford. Maybelline Marble bakes some amazing cakes.
Miss Jenkins had been a school librarian back in the day. Granny Fay.
Tender Heart is…
…the western romance series about mail-order brides in which Emery practically lives and the one in which the author died before the last (lost) book could be published. Rory Earhart is the ideal Western hero who hated Etta Jenkins, a mail-order bride. Duke and Johnny are his brothers. Daisy McNeil is the youngest and feistiest bride. Dax Davenport, a hired gunslinger, is the villain. Esther Reeves sticks her nose in everyone’s business.
Raphael is Savannah’s hairdresser in Atlanta.
The Cover and Title
The cover is pastel sweet with a meadow of Queen Ann’s lace and a pink-flowering tree against a blue spring sky in the background. A pink-skirted, jean-jacketed, and cowboy-boot-wearing Emery, her long, wavy, red hair trailing over one shoulder, is sitting on a rail fence as the black-hatted Cole in his jeans and blue denim shirt has his head bent over her shoulder, his right arm around her waist, holding her against him, their left hands clasped. An info blurb is at the very top with the author’s name in a deep blue beneath it. The title combines script with sans-serif in a gradation of pale, pale pink to a deeper pink. The series information is centered at the very bottom in blue.
The title bucks two ways, for Emery fell in love a long time ago with the series, but now she’s Falling for Tender Heart as a town.
