Sandy M’s review of Rugged Hearts (The Kinnison Legacy, Book 1) by Amanda McIntyre
Contemporary Romance published by Decadent Publishing 21 Apr 13
This is my first Amanda McIntyre book. While I like some things about the book, there are a couple of nitpicks that I just can’t get past.
The best parts of the book are Wyatt, his brothers, and Aimee. Ms. McIntyre is able to portray her characters likeable and sympathetic with little problem. Wyatt, Dalton, and Rein are the typical ranchers and brothers who kid and tease each other as men do. As children Wyatt and Dalton were left with their stepfather, Jed, when their mother decided to abandon them and take off to parts unknown with a new man. Rein is Jed’s nephew, coming to live with his uncle when his parents are killed. They’re raised as brothers and the men now run the ranch. It’s Wyatt who has a difficult time socializing, especially during the holidays, and prefers to stay home with himself for company.
Aimee has her own deep-seated hurt, but she’s embraced life after the death of her twin, taking on the dreams of her sister of becoming a teacher. Though she misses her parents being so far away from home, she loves her new job in End of the Line, Montana. When she meets the rancher who lives outside of town, not even his standoff-ish attitude can stop her from thinking about him. After a few of his brush-offs when she attempts friendly conversation in town, Aimee does a bit of investigating to learn more about Wyatt Kinnison. What she learns is heartbreaking and she vows to show him life and people really have so much to offer him.
That change in Wyatt begins when Aimee and her students take a field trip to the ranch. On their return trip, snow causes an accident and Wyatt is their rescuer, and he ends up with unexpected guests in the days before Christmas. He never thought he’d enjoy being around children, but these kids burrow their way into his heart in no time flat. And having Aimee near is both pleasurable and painful, considering there are now kids in the house, so he tries to keep his hands to himself as much as possible. By the time the weather allows them all to go home, Wyatt’s heart has begun to soften.
I like the dichotomy of family relationships between Wyatt and Aimee. She’s grown up secure in her parents’ and sibling’s love, therefore believes in sharing herself with others, living life to the fullest. Whereas Wyatt, he allows the past to dictate his future. He sticks close to home, refuses to help out in the community as his stepdad always did, and never celebrates Christmas. I also like that his coming around is done fairly slowly. He doesn’t have that a-ha! moment all at once, but it creeps up on him little by little to give him a chance to realized what’s happening and take heart that it’s the right thing that needs to be happening at that point in time.
All of these things are the best in the book. What doesn’t work, especially in the very beginning, is we’re being told about everything through backstory. There’s very little dialogue, and when the story actually begins and picks up, reads well, is when dialogue is used much more. Until that time, however, it’s long paragraph after longer paragraph page after page of telling the reader what’s happened. I would rather have had all that information given with dialogue between characters, which we do get a bit of later in the book, making the information redundant. It would have been more powerful shared between hero and heroine, among others.
Even with all the good things I enjoyed in this book, it’s the dragging backstory that happens so early that made this a very long read for me. Just when I thought the story was picking up and should begin to move along, there’d be more of the drag popping up to slow it all down again. But the story does eventually pick up, leaves out all that dense print, and gives just the characters and their interactions. It comes a bit too late, though. I still anticipate Dalton’s and Rein’s story, however. I’m as intrigued with them as I am with Wyatt.
Grade: C
Summary:
Rugged, quiet, hardworking, Wyatt takes his position as head of the Kinnison family seriously. But the scars of betrayal by the women to whom he once trusted his heart now prompt his stark, simple game plan, and no one in hell is going to convince him any differently. What matters most, besides the welfare of his brothers, is to manage the ranch left to him and never risk his heart again to something as foolish as love—but after meeting Aimee, Wyatt begins to realize that a man should never say never to a determined second grade teacher.
When vivacious, resilient Aimee Worth loses her twin sister in a tragic accident, she makes the choice to live out her sister’s dream of teaching in the small mountain community called End of the Line, Montana, never suspecting she’d meet her Mr. Right in the middle of nowhere—he just doesn’t know it yet. Used to challenges, her spirit shatters the perceptions that have kept him isolated from living life beyond the ranch, proving to him that when it comes to love, the greatest risk is not taking one.
Read an excerpt.
Other books in this series:
Rustler’s Heart – Rein’s book
Renegade Heart – Dalton’s book
