Sunday 27 July 2014

Review: Sealed With a Kiss: Inspy Kisses Collection #2 by various authors (Tronstad, Daley, Tang, Williams)

Sealed With a Kiss:  Inspy Kisses Collection #2 is an anthology which has an author line up of Janet Tronstad, Margaret Daley, Camy Tang, and Lacy Williams.  This collection of romantic novellas is released by Aspendawn Books, with one historical western, two contemporary suspense stories, and one contemporary story.

1)  Mail Order Sunshine Bride by Janet Tronstad
This historical western is set in Miles City, Montana Territory, in 1886.  Eleanor (Nellie) O'Reilly has come by rail with her four year old son, Danny, in tow.  Widowed at the age of 24, she seeks a fresh start as a mail order bride.  Instead of meeting her future husband at the station, she is welcomed to Miles City by the local sheriff, Patrick MacDonald.  Because Patrick doesn't immediately reveal why he's there to meet her at the station, Nellie guesses that Elias, her intended has died, but Patrick reassures her that Elias is very much alive, however, the sheriff needs to escort her and her son to the jail.  By the end of the first chapter, we find out that Patrick didn't really want to take up this duty, but did so to handle the quarrel between Elias and a mountain man, Sawtooth Jim.  Elias gambled away Nellie to Sawtooth Jim in a poker game.

Nellie no longer wishes to marry Elias, but wants to repay the train fare which is an astronomical sum to reimburse.  Patrick, upon meeting Nellie and spending time with her, feels protective towards his two new charges, and would be willing to give up money for his own dream of owning cattle for his ranch so that she would be free of her debt.  However, Nellie will not take any charity, not even from Mrs. Lilly, a former soiled dove who gives Nellie an idea on how to repay Elias through respectable means.  Even if Nellie frees herself from Elias, would Patrick be able to win Nellie's heart? She's dead set against a man who uses a gun, but Patrick is the sheriff and a gun is vital and necessary equipment for his line of work.

I enjoyed the dry humour in this novella and I liked Nellie and Patrick.  You get an inkling that Nellie is attracted to Patrick from the first time she sees him; she perceives him to be dangerous and forceful, and is quite unsettled by him.  Elias is sufficiently weasel-like, and Sawtooth Jim, from what little we see of him, is quite a character.   I haven't always been able to get into Janet Tronstad's work in the past, but I found Mail Order Sunshine Bride to be an enjoyable story to read.

2)  Deadly Intent by Margaret Daley
This contemporary romantic suspense novella reunites Sarah Osborn, a Texas Ranger, and Ian O'Leary, a former FBI agent who has returned home to continue running the family ranch after his father had passed on.  Sarah is investigating a series of cattle rustling and is assigned to check out the theft of Ian's prize stallion to see if this has any connection to her case.  Interacting with Ian is awkward for Sarah because of their past; they had been sweethearts while in their teens, but Ian broke up with Sarah rather suddenly.  Fifteen years previously, Ian left Sarah to avenge a friend who had died in a terrorist attack, and threw away a future with Sarah in order to pursue terrorists through his work with the FBI.

As Sarah's investigation progresses, more threats against Ian and his ranch occur.  These seem to indicate that the culprit(s) may not necessarily be the cattle rustlers that Sarah is trying to arrest.  As danger and threats increase against Ian and Sarah, it becomes apparent that they need to investigate all the possible enemies that Ian has made as an FBI agent.  They begin to fall in love with each other again as they face the challenges that unfold in the mystery of who is threatening Ian. 

I thought that Margaret Daley had the story plotted out well.  There was a flashback that was described in Chapter 1 that gave a hint of foreshadowing where the story was going to go.  Things are revealed quite logically and I thought that all the facets and threads of the story were tied together quite nicely by the time the novella reached its conclusion.

3)  Unshakable Pursuit by Camy Tang
The title really matches up with the story.  There was definitely a lot of pursuing in this novella.  The protagonists are Dr. Geoffrey Whelan, whose faith in God has been shaken from his time serving in medical missions aid in Japan after the tsunami, and Nurse Maylin Kinley, who has been hurt emotionally by her family and her ex-boyfriend.  They are warned to run for their lives by a mysterious woman who promptly disappears after she visits them at the medical clinic they both work at.  Shortly after, Geoff and Maylin are threatened by two Asian hitmen who try to abduct them.  Our intrepid twosome have no idea who is pursuing them or the reason why they are being hunted down.  Their only clue is video footage from the clinic's cameras that reveal some hints about the woman's identity. 

There is a rather frantic pace to the story.  While Geoff and Maylin need to take precautions to keep the hitmen from pursuing them, they themselves are also in pursuit of their mysterious angel of mercy who has also gone into hiding because she also fears being hunted down by the same people looking for Geoff and Maylin.  The reader finds out information at the same time our hero and heroine do, and there are a lot of suspenseful moments and situations thrown their way in such a small window of time.  The relationship between our protagonists develop quite quickly too under such intense pressure.   Geoff is forced to examine where his relationship with God has gone and is challenged to simply trust Him to keep him and Maylin safe.  Maylin realizes that she had been disappointed in the past by people who claimed to be Christians, but finds herself drawn to the love for God that Geoff and his family demonstrate in their lives. 

There were moments when the pace and situations of this story had my head spinning over what was happening to our protagonists.  However, I liked that this story touched on the struggles that these characters were having in their faith and how they overcome these challenges in this story.  I liked Necessary Proof  better, another novella written by Camy Tang that appears in First Kisses: Inspy Kisses Collection #1 (reviewed previously on February 27th, 2014), but Unshakable Pursuit was still pretty good.

4)  With Love, Cowboy by Lacy Williams
Ryan Michaels has loved Ashley Reynolds since they were teens.  She has returned home to Redbud Trails, Oklahoma, after being discharged from serving as a marine because of injuries which resulted in her arm being amputated.  She has struggled with her identity for years; after graduating from high school, she discovered that she had been adopted and questioned who she was.  Now with the loss of her arm, she is no longer military and needs to find herself again and figure out what to do with her future.  She's just not certain that she wants to find out those things with Ryan.

Ryan has his work cut out for him.   Ashley has no idea of all the things that he has done to help her parents while she was serving in the military.  He had assumed the position of store manager in order to help keep her parents' business afloat since Ashley's dad developed Alzheimer's.  He cooks meals for her parents' twice a week using the excuse that he needs someone to test his recipes.  He helps her mother in her recovery from a heart attack by transporting her to medical appointments, etc.. He had been writing letters to her since she started with the marines, informing her of all that he had done, but she did not read any of his letters.  As a result, she is under the impression that he is an irresponsible flake and college drop out who is still in a dead end job that he had started when he was in high school. 

In spite of all the good that Ryan has done, Ashley is still suspicious of him, especially when she finds out that he had been the lessee of her parents' farmland and notices that he had been altering information on timecards.  Has Ryan been taking advantage of her parents?  Will she ever read his letters to find out what kind of man he is?  Will she ever accept his love for her and love him in return?

With Love, Cowboy was a nice story.  Ryan is a sweetheart.  How could Ashley not accept Ryan?  On the other hand, Ryan might be trying a little bit too hard to win Ashley's affection and Ashley is a gal who is still a bit mixed up.  I almost wanted to throttle her for not seeing what a great guy Ryan is.  I still enjoyed reading it, though.


Disclaimer:  I was provided with a free e-copy of Sealed With a Kiss from NetGalley in exchange for a review.  All opinions stated in this review are mine.