Badlands Bride (Pocket Books Romance)

by Adrianne Wood

Lily Highfill has spent eight years in Colorado, exiled from her wealthy, high-society Boston family. With a long-awaited invitation to return home finally in hand, she's doing all she can to secure her betrothal to a charming and cultured gentleman. But with just a few weeks left at her grandfather's fossil expedition, a rugged and handsome stranger rides in on horseback, stirring up trouble . . . and excavating a place for himself in her heart. Free-spirited journalist Mason Donnelly came to the frontier to cure his writers' block, unaware the badlands offered such tempting distractions. Lily is as breathtaking as a Western sunset. But she's also as delicate as a bowie knife. The more Mason digs up about the suspicious bone-hunters she works for, the more the feisty heiress derails his plans. If he exposes the priceless secrets hidden deep in the desert, will he lose his only chance with the sensuous diamond in the rough?

• ISBN10: 1501133713
• ISBN13: 9781501133718
• Publish Date: 5 September 2015 (first published 27 November 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publisher: The Gallery Press
• Imprint: Gallery Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Pages: 384
• Language: English

Reviews

[Angie]

In an effort to expand my Historical Romance horizons, I decided to give Badlands Bride a chance. I had never read a Western before, but it is something I had been curious about. Plus, the description mentions fossil excavation, which is definitely something I find interesting! Luckily, I thoroughly enjoyed my introduction to Western Romance! I'm glad I started with this one instead of a typical cowboy or outlaw one. A struggling journalist and a fossil sketch artists are much interesting to me. Sure, there might not have been any horse chases or gun fights, but I still really enjoyed it.

Lily was sent away from her family in Boston to live with her aunt in Denver due to some typical teenage tantrums. Now, at the age of 22, she's helping out at her grandfather's dig site by sorting through rubble and sketching her finds. She's also hoping to get a proposal from Cecil St. John, who is also on the dig team. Then Mason Donnelly rides into their camp site. He's just left his job at a newspaper, since he's been lacking his passion for writing. He's been to this site before and stops on his way across the country. He stays longer than he intended because of Lily. Not because he's interested in her (at least at first), but because she asked him to help her make Cecil jealous to coax the proposal out of him! Needless to say, their staged flirtation soon turns into a full blown romance, and Lily realizes that Cecil is not the man for her, despite what her (very rich) family says.

In addition to this fun and sweet romance, Badlands Bride also has a pretty good plot. Like I said before, it's not all that exciting or dangerous, but I do think it was a good one. Mason is looking for a story that excites him and that can get him back to work, and of course he finds that at the dig site. Lily's grandfather is behaving quite weird, because he's found sapphires on site. He doesn't want gem miners moving in, so he makes Lily promise to keep it a secret. Then someone comes shooting at Lily and Mason. Is it related to the secret sapphires? Maybe, maybe not. Of course, there's a twist at the end which Mason unveils through his investigative journalism skills and gets him that story he's been seeking. And then there's another twist, that I can honestly say I never saw coming because it's really out of nowhere and felt kind of unnecessary, since it had no impact on the overall story. It was at the very end, so by then I had already made up my mind about really liking this one, so I didn't mind.

Badlands Bride was really cute and kind of steamy. It's definitely not like anything I had read before, and I really liked that. It's nice to read a Historical Romance with a new setting and different types of characters. I highly recommend this one, if you're looking for a light-hearted and unique romance.

Read more of my reviews at Pinkindle Reads & Reviews.