Her One and Only Valentine by Trish Wylie

Her One and Only Valentine by Trish Wylie ~ HR ~ February 2008

Ratings: 

Excellence: Excellent

Steaminess Factor:  Affectionate

Personal Totals:

Harlequin / Silhouette / Etc: 9

Others: 0

Total Books Read: 9

 Description:

What happens when old flames Kane and Rhiannon inherit part of the same property together?  She gets the house and he gets the property.  Considering that they started hating each other over the years due to a bunch of misconceptions and assumptions that are so easily made when you’re young and scared, is there hope to put all that behind them?  There are a lot of great reasons when they should try to get over the past?  Their attraction for one another and their daughter being the main reasons.  Will they succeed?

 Critique:

As many know, Trish Wylie is an auto buy for me.  So far, I’ve liked all of her stories.  This one is no exception.  It has taken me a long time to read this book for many reasons.  The emotions in this book were running strong and sometimes that makes me take a little longer to read.  Also, I find that some books seem to have less words per line or per page, I suppose to reach the page quota for the book, this one was full.  So, it took me longer to cover 10 pages.  I have also been sleepy in the morning which means I don’t read on the bus in the mornings and I only get to read at night when I have a place to sit so I lost a few nights, too.  So, for many reasons, it took me longer to get through this book.

The story starts with a bang and doesn’t slow down until it’s finished.  The emotion level was very high during this story.  It was always clear to me what the characters were going through.  There were many times when my heart broke for either the H or the h.  They were not only victims of the choices the other made but of a terrible set of circumstances that put two young people in a difficult position.  Both came through with flying colors.

I love a story that takes place over more than a week.  This love story may have started when they were younger but even in their present it took much more than a week for this story to develop.  The characters spent over one month sorting through issues and the past.  This is always a plus with me.

The dialog was great, too.  The dialog between the characters as they sorted through their reasons for doing the things they did in the past and why they came to hate one another was very good. 

It is easy to imagine that each of these two characters (I don’t want to say too much about them because this story should be read) had a lot of difficult things to get through and they managed it and were stronger for it.  One of the things I look for in characters is development during the story.  The ability to have an opinion about something and put it back in question when you are faced with a different set of facts.  Both of the characters had to do a lot of re-thinking and re-adjusting to accept the new set of facts that were now set out before them in their present.  This was very well done in this particular book.

I highly recommend this book.  It’s great.  I read another great book from this author a while back called The Firefighter's Chosen Bride which was in the Presents line and I loved it.  I hope we will see more Presents books from this author… 

Kel (scoobie)
Quiet Canadians ~ 2008 Challenge Blog