kirkusreviews.com
The Texas Panhandle in the late 19th century is the setting for
the first in Broday’s (To Catch a Texas Star, 2018, etc.) latest Western
romance series, which pairs a wounded woman with an idealistic settler.
Ex-outlaw Clay Colby has worked tirelessly to make Devil’s
Crossing habitable for settlers and just needs a bride to solidify his new life
as a rancher. When flame-haired Tally Shannon arrives, she is just as strong
and kind as her letters suggested, but she’s even more beautiful save for a
diamond-shaped brand on her cheek. The victim of a jealous stepmother, Tally
was committed to the Creedmore Lunatic Asylum, where she suffered unimaginable
physical and mental abuse at the hands of the warden, Slade Tarver. From the
first page, Broday puts readers in the middle of the action, when a rival
outlaw tries to burn down Devil’s Crossing’s new buildings and a gunfight
ensues. Readers may feel they have missed an earlier installment as characters
and events from Clay’s past drive much of the immediate action, while the
actual plot stalls for most of the book until Clay and Tally set out to avenge
her abuse at the asylum. Marriage-of-convenience plots work well when the
author takes the time to develop the romantic relationship that should have
existed before the “I do’s,” but Clay and Tally are instantly smitten and stay
that way. Tally’s inability to trust and Clay’s controlling nature could have
made for fireworks, but her one-step-forward, two-steps-back attitude is merely
frustrating.
Two-dimensional characters, slow plotting, and a lack of romance
mark this Western “return to sender.”
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