The Wren Wings of the West: Book One

Torn between an "it was OK" 2 star rating and "I liked it" 3 stars, so I gave it the benefit of the doubt and went with 3 but it's more like a 2.5. Anyway, this is a story that had a lot of potential that didn't quite get there for me. As others have noted, there is no way that a woman, especially a pretty one, would have lived with Native Americans, been sold to an abusive man, and then sold to another man and still remained a virgin (and a complete innocent in all matters related to any sex act, not just intercourse) at the age of 18-20. If you can set that impossibility aside, as well as the highly unlikely meeting between her and the hero, Matt, at her family's abandoned homestead miles from his house, the story starts off well enough. I think there was a missed opportunity to do more with her background as a captive white woman that would have steered the story into more serious but satisfying waters. Much of her flashbacks to her time with the Native Americans were well done and paint a picture of her time with them but the author glosses over what had to be traumatizing adjusting to the loss of her family and living amongst a culturally foreign people. Likewise on the abuse she had to have suffered once she was sold. She and another woman arrive unscathed at her homestead after traversing miles and miles of open land in "Indian territory" which is certainly possible but feels unlikely. The story then moves to a plotline around her and Matt trying to figure out who killed her parents (her sisters survived and were sent to the west coast to live with relatives - Molly does attempt to contact them, but doesn't spend much effort trying to reunite with them). Along the way, she and Matt awkwardly transition from childhood friends (she was 10 when she was abducted and he is about 10 years older than her) to realizing they are attracted to each other. Matt feels this is wrong, I suppose like some sort of incest/pedophilia vibe since he was like a big brother to her before she disappeared. Molly feels that her interest isn't returned by Matt and maybe her background makes her undesirable. The "mystery" behind her parents' attack and her abduction was meh - it felt mostly like a plot device used to keep Matt and Molly together until they could realize they are made for each other, as opposed to the central driving plot of the story. But perhaps that's as it should be since this is after all, a romance and not a mystery. Matt's troubled background as a Ranger who is captured and tortured is also glossed over and aside from a limp and the author's infrequent references to "that terrible time when bad things happened to him", there's not much to indicate he has his own troubles and trauma. I liked that Molly was spunky and independent and she wasn't afraid to show it. I also liked how this made her feel "unladylike" which no doubt in that time period, it would definitely have been considered so. This sets up another side plot where an interfering and bigoted neighbor lady tries to set Matt up with her prim and proper daughter, who would no doubt freak out at the reality of moving from an east coast upbringing with all of the creature comforts and cleanliness to life on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. While I won't rush out to read the next book in the series, I'd be willing to give it a try. There's just so much background ripe with tension and sociological/psychological ramifications with both the h and H here in this story that could make for a really rich characterization that gets passed over that it felt like a shame to me to miss out on that.