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An Unexpected Widow (2000)

by Carré White(Favorite Author)

3.64 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Romance

series

The Colorado Brides

review 1: This historical romance takes place in the 1800s with Hannah and her husband, Frank, who is a preacher, moving to Colorado Territory to farm. They build a house and Frank hires two man to help build other buildings and plant the fields. Frank falls off a roof while helping neighbor and is paralyzed. He then get pneumonia and dies leaving Hannah a widow at 19. She tries to cope with her grief and keep the farm going but relies on one of the hands, Nathan, to take care of the farm. Hannah and Nathan were drawn to each other even before Frank dies which she is very uncomfortable about. Not only is it not proper for her to have feeling for any man other than her husband, she remembers her family's instructions that if a man was a gambler or drank, no was no good. Since Natha... moren was a gambler and drunkard - he must be no good.I enjoyed this story and learned a lot about that time period. Hannah is so concerned about society and what people think but I guess that was the way it was for a city woman at that time. But I didn't see how she thought it would be acceptable for Nathan to stay in her bed when she couldn't sleep after Frank died. She didn't care what people thought then!
review 2: I got this book as a free Kindle Download. It's also pretty short, which was good considering it was pretty terrible. My first issue was that it was in first person. I didn't much like being in Hannah's head as she was pretty naive, spoiled, and later on annoying. I'm also used to reading historical romances in third person so it was a bit jarring.I didn't much like any of the characters. Frank was pretty one dimensional; he was a good preacher who was trying his hand at farming and then he died. It was a bit refreshing that he was optimistic about his paralysis, but it was, as obvious from the title, all for naught. Other than that he was pretty much a non-entity except as a good person that Hannah was in love with and didn't have a problem being married to. Which made Nathan's character all the more problematic. There's even a line in the book where Hannah states that she feels lust for him. While Frank is still alive. Now, I can believe this would really happen, but Hannah's "guilt" felt more like lip service considering the two find themselves in various compromising situations while Frank is still alive.Also, once Frank dies Hannah has no problem sleeping in the same bed, cuddled with Nathan, which would be weird enough in a contemporary novel let alone a historical book. And then she gets super clingy and claims she can't sleep unless Nathan is with her. Nathan, who up till this point has also been a non-entity except a vaguely good looking guy who drinks and gambles and visits prostitutes (at least until he starts working for the Clarks), finally gets a bit of character development and says he won't continue to sleep in the same bed as her unless they're married. Hannah pouts. It's even stated in the narration that she does, which is just irritating.Anyway, it was extremely contrived, and I didn't like any of the characters. Even though there weren't any sex scenes or straight up infidelity, there was a lot of innuendo (at least most of it was between Hannah and Frank to show how much in love they were). The writing was amateurish, and the dialogue was stilted at first but got a little bit (but not much) better later on.Sometimes I'll give a book two stars if it was terrible but still had a good grasp of grammar and syntax. But considering I didn't enjoy this at all and hated being inside Hannah's head the whole time, this is getting one star.Also, what the heck was with the random thought that a harmonica and banjo weren't a logical pairing (I'm paraphrasing, I'm too lazy to check to see what Hannah actually said)? Did she just arrive in the west that day? less

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