Book Review: The Loyal Heart

I was really excited to get into The Loyal Heart as I had enjoyed Shelley Shepard Gray’s short story that was a part of the book “Among the Fair Magnolias”. It’s not every day anymore that you get a western theme novel so I was excited to see this story set in Texas! 

This story has a really intriguing premise, Robert Truax, former Confederate Officer and war prisoner has some to Galveston to check in on the widow of his former comrade and to make sure she is comfortable and secure. What he finds when he arrives at Maranda Markham’s home turned boarding house is that everything is far from okay. Maranda is in a deep depression, her home threatened by her mother-in-law, and worse of all her husband, Philip’s, name dragged through the mud after being branded a traitor after his death.

Robert wants to honor the promise he made to Philip and the other men in his company to watch out for and care for each other after the war but he hardly knows where to start after discovering the position Maranda is in! As he begins to remedy the situation she is in he finds himself in danger of losing his heart- something that was never part of the mission!

I thought this was a nice story from start to finish. However- It really didn’t draw me in or delight me the way that the previous stories of the author that I have read and that surprised me and rather disappointed me. The story moves both quickly in the development of the characters feelings for each other, and slowly, in the way that the plot progresses. Something that was really frustrating was the repeating of information over and over again. I really don’t feel like once a detail has been revealed and explored that it’s necessary to repeat it again a few paragraphs of chapters later. Readers are intelligent and want to be pushed to explore, not talked down to and a number of times I kinda felt that way.

I would say give this book a go if you are looking for a light vacation read that doesn’t take a lot of time or concentration! 

Final Rating: 3 

I have been given a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review and opinion of the product.

Book Review: Truth Be Told

 Today I have a book from an author new to me! I've been wanting to catch a book from author Carol Cox for a while now after I was intrigued by the title and subject of her last work so I was eager to snap up a copy of "Truth Be Told" when it appeared!

The story revolves around Amelia Wagner. Amelia is more then ready for a change of pace when, fresh off the train from Denver and the fast paced high life it offers, she sets foot back in her father's newspaper office in Granite Springs, Arizona. She expects to spend a pleasant summer catching up with her father and once again being in her true home but best laid plans are often thwarted and Amelia finds herself saying goodbye to her dying father and trying to fill the large shoes he's left behind in his beloved profession.

Amelia finds in the wake of her father's death that the paper in is a delicate position due to his inability to pound the pavement in the months during his decline and she will be the doing or undoing of all of her father's years of hard work. She also is puzzled by the biggest story in her father's bulls eye- an expose on a local mining company that never fully came to light. As Amelia beings to track down the full story she finds help in the most unlikely of sources- an employee of the very mining company that her father railed against publicly before his death. Soon Amelia and Ben find themselves in deeper than they ever expected with a story that may be the undoing of both of them!

There was a few quirks with the book that I noticed and wanted to point out. One of them was that Amelia is a really good girl. I mean really, aside from being rather innocent and over trusting she practically has no flaws. Every time she reacts to something in a normal human way (anger, disappointment, confusion, etc.) she, in the very next moment corrects herself and immediately thinks Biblically about the situation in question, always seeing the situation for what it must be and not what it actually appears at the moment. I don't know about you but I just have a hard time liking someone who is always good, who can always change on the drop of a dime and be...perfect. It makes me wonder- 'can a character be too good?'
Another thing was that the mining described as taking place sounds a awfully like today's fracking. It is a pet peeve of mine to see people dragging modern issues into the past for soap box purposes and although Cox never carries through with fully disclosing the ins and outs of the mining operation she has enough of a soap box to make sure that the characters fully disapprove of what is being done in their community. It just isn't appropriate for this setting without providing some explanation in an author's note.  

This book was in all honesty a quick read, the storyline was pretty basic and I'm sad to say predictable. There was nothing terribly exciting in the plot for me- but the thing is that there was nothing particularly wrong with the plot either... As I continued to read and analyze this and try to make sense of it I came to the realization that this is a book that I would have really enjoyed- when I was 14 or 15 years old... And this is the fact that frustrates me. For me it just doesn't deliver on the 'grown up' fiction I was expecting to read. I want characters to be flawed, I need situations to be real, and I think that putting things right doesn't come at the wave of a magic wand. For me this story had more relationship fantasy than realistic fiction.

If you like your fiction on the light side and don't want to think too much about logic and loopholes then this book is for you,  but next time I think I'll be skipping the sugary  fluff and finding something a little more my speed.

Final Rating: 3


I received this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review and opinion of the product.