Promising Hearts by Radclyffe Summary and Reviews
|
List Price: Our Price: $9.50 You Save: $6.45 (40%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $2.36 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of Promising Hearts
Book Review: Back to Montana With a Wild Cast of Characters
Summary: 4 Stars
For what I believe is the first time, I'm giving a Radclyffe book 4 stars instead of 5. `Promising Hearts' is a pseudo-continuation of her wonderful `Innocent Hearts,' but doesn't begin to meet her usual level of artistry.
This book brings back characters - rancher Jesse Forbes, her lover Kate Beecher, frontier madam Mae, Kate's family, and other townsfolk. It introduces Dr. Vance Phelps, a woman who served in the army and lost her arm in the last battle of the Civil War.
Feeling that her life is essentially worthless, Vance moves West to assist a frontier doctor in his practice. She dresses like a man, but is otherwise very different from Jesse. Vance becomes friends with Kate and encourages her to become a midwife. In the meantime, Vance begins to build a relationship with Mae. It is due to this relationship that the book takes a brief, but unnecessary, segue into a mystery regarding who actually owns the saloon and employs Mae. I say "unnecessary" because it really doesn't add anything to the story and seems like an after thought. The book also seems to just drop off at the end. There is very little closure for anything but the mystery. It's almost as if Rad didn't really finish the book.
As with her other books, Rad's actual writing does not disappoint. She is a master at bringing her characters to life and telling an interesting tale. This reader was merely disappointed with the last few chapters. Still highly recommended... especially if she's planning a sequel!
Book Review: Captured My Heart
Summary: 5 Stars
Radclyffe has done it again! I loved this book! This book has everything a good book should have: plot, great characters, humor, romance, and as Radclyffe does best sex. Jessie and Kate are as great together in this book as in the first and I also loved Mae the first time around. I was glad to see that she finally got what was coming to her! The introduction to Vance was a wonderful addition. I hope that there is more story for these 4 amazing women...as I am sure you will see the possiblities for future books as I have! Radclyffe always leaves you hoping for more...
Book Review: Compelling and Exciting
Summary: 5 Stars
Time after time, Radclyffe's books touch the heart and fill our imaginations. Promising Hearts is no exception, and that is what makes this book one of her most compelling and exciting to date.
Set at the end of the bloodiest war on American soil, Promising Hearts by Radclyffe gives the reader what she craves most, an inspiring romance filled with more than one heroine. It picks up immediately where Innocent Hearts leaves off. It is 1866 in the Montana territory, and Kate Beecher is now living with Jessie Forbes on her ranch outside of New Hope. Mae is still the town's madam, attending to her girls. Dr. Vance Phelps is added to this trio, having just arrived from Philadelphia after spending three of the last four years on the front lines of the Civil War.
Radclyffe's prose persuades the reader to believe in her characters. It doesn't matter whether it is 1866 Montana or 2006 Philadelphia, their stories are realistic, fascinating, and have us hanging onto every word. She has an intuitive sense of who her characters are and does not hesitate to share that with us. In Promising Hearts, Vance is battle weary, aloof and broken. She watched her best friend and colleague die on the battlefield during the last days of the war and could not save him because of her own injuries. She travels to Montana to forget the destruction and to possibly salvage her career. She surely does not expect to find much more until she meets the town's madam, Mae, a woman with integrity and a heart of gold. This brave and honorable woman is also alone, fighting the day to day battles of a frontier brothel, until Vance steps into her life. The two seem an unlikely coupling, but through Radclyffe's astute storytelling, we come to understand their similarities and what makes them kindred spirits.
With many romances to choose from each month, Promising Hearts is an easy choice. Radclyffe grasps the language of love, its subtleties as well as its potency. With minimal words and a clear strong voice, she captures the emotions of her characters perfectly, and we can imagine the moment. Her restraint fuels the story's passion. The language is authentic; the dialogue revealing. Without the detailed display of the physical aspects of lovemaking, these scenes are tender and filled with devotion and desire. It is a powerful exchange of love that fills the pages of this story.
Promising Hearts is more than a western. It is more than a love story. It is a celebration of our history through fiction, making us proud that these are our stories as well.
Book Review: Golden Crown Literary Society Award Winner!
Summary: 5 Stars
Utterly romantic
Fabulous reading - so many wonderful moments. I have always loved westerns and this novel and it's earlier published companion novel Innocent Hearts are a treat. The depiction of the horror of war and it's aftermath are very moving. The surgery in one of the scenes was like a thriller - edge of your seat reading.
The start of Jessie & Kate's life together, their actions and emotions are spot on realistic and absolutely lovely. Mae & Vance what a connection! They are so passionately tender. The scoundrel Phineas Drake was scary and intimidating.
The love scenes are both erotic and romantic at once.
The writing is luscious -
"... she knew she'd only skimmed the surface of passions buried so deep it might take a lifetime to search them out."
From the publisher's web site -
The Montana frontier of the 1860s might be dangerous, but only if you have something to lose.
Dr. Vance Phelps lost everything in the War Between the States--her professional future, her place in Philadelphia society, and her faith in herself. She travels to New Hope, Montana with no hope of happiness and no desire for anything except forgetting. Mae is a frontier madam, used to standing alone. She fiercely guards the well-being of the lost young women who come under her care--she just never expected one of them to be a doctor, wounded in body and soul.
Can two outcasts find refuge in one another's hearts?
Book Review: Good
Summary: 4 Stars
This was a good book with characters from the first book Passionate Kisses. But it was based on not so much Jesse and I would have like that better. Mae is a good character but I just related to Jesse better.
But that is my hang up.
More Promising Hearts reviews:
1 2
1 2