Land of Dreams

[vintageromancereader]

Jewel of the Prairie

Ex-Major Booker Hayes had seen how much love this sun-kissed farmer's daughter had to give. And he wanted her in his life. As a mother to his orphaned niece, and much more. For Thea was the first woman to ever make him long for home and hearth.

Tall and dark as midnight, Booker Hayes had come across the plains and moved right into Thea's lonely heart. Offering her a life that was a dream come true. A dream that could never be, until Thea learned to believe in Booker...and in herself.

Original Publisher: Harlequin
Original Year of Publication: 1995
Page Count: 299

I didn't enjoy this book nearly as much as The Doctor's Wife, mostly because I found the heroine, Thea Coulson-Hayes, incredibly annoying. She has no self-esteem, has been taken for granted for all of her life, and the moment a man shows her a shred of respect as a woman, she rejects him outright and stirs up all this angst and drama between them. It's just stupid, and makes for the sorts of misunderstandings that are eye-rollingly irritating.

This book also contains some melodrama beyond the main pairing and their found family of children. There are lots of petty people populating this book, and they get so riled up that they come within inches of taking the hero's life for a crime he didn't commit. It's ridiculous and unnecessary.

The romance is surprisingly lusty. The hero and heroine have all sorts of fantasies about each other, which are detailed in the narrative. Given Thea's lack of self-esteem, she misses all of the signs that her husband is, indeed, attracted to her; she allows gossip from other women (whom she doesn't even like!) to doubt him and his intentions. All the lust in the world can't make up for this fundamental lack of trust, so ultimately it doesn't work for me.

The book is well-written, and I really liked Lucas and Zoe, the kids. Ms. St. John does a wonderful job conveying personality for the mute child in Zoe. It gives her character another layer of depth, and she is able to bring her to life without the use of words. Lucas, like Benjamin in The Doctor's Wife, has had a hardscabble existence and is slow to trust that anything good can happen to him, but he is fiercely loyal to his found family in a way that only an adolescent teen can be.

All in all, this was a disappointing read for me, but it won't deter me from reading more of this author's backlist.

⭐⭐