Wedding Bells at Wandering Creek Ranch (Western Weddings) by Patricia Thayer (Harlequin Romance April 2008)

A short western romance with a bit of suspense that brings romance to a whole ranch and family

Private investigator Jack Sullivan has a job to do --- find Dean Kingsley and investigate a case of theft. If he has to camp out at Wandering Creek Ranch in his car, so be it. Dean's sister Willow, daughter of THE Hollywood movie star couple Molly Reynolds and Matt Kingsley, cherishes her privacy and she will do anything to protect herself and her brother from tabloids and gossip...even if it means inviting the persistant detective straight into her home and hiring him to help around the ranch! sanything is better than having someone seeing him camped out in hs car and drawing someone's attention. Can WIllow see beyond her past and her family's celebrity to trust Jack's claim that he wants to help her brother?

Patricia Thayer is a Harlequin Romance author who jst keeps growing on me with each book I read of hers. One thing I adore about her romances is that she brings romance out beyond the hero and heroine to an entire ranch or community of people. Her romances, heal hearts not just with the hero-heroine romance but also in not necessarily romantic ways to the people surrounding the hero and heroine. Here, we see how the groweing love and trust between Jack and Willow changes the lives of those around them. Powerful statement about love, in my opinion. I am quite fond of western romance too so I enjoy her settings and the cowboy atmosphere.

On the Harlequin Romance forum, the authors were taling about variety in this line. I think Patricia Thayer is another example of why this line appeals to me so much..and why, me who craves variety more than anything, can sit down and read so many books in this line and still feel like a satisfied reader. I like romance that narrows the focus on the hero and heroine like the HR romances with the "Heart to Heart" identifier. But I also love romances like Patricia Thayer's who have a general fiction kind of feel with a romantic core because the romance expands outward. I loved Margaret Way's last one Cattle Rancher, Secret Son romance at also because it went beyond the hero-heroine. For me, this is also the beauty of the short romance form --- there are so many endless possibilities, so many endless types of wonderful romances that reading can be an act of discovery.

AKA Merri
Family Challenge Team: The Spine Breakers with my dh Glenn AKA Phaedrus