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Title: To Claim a Wife
Harlequin Enterprises
Item Number: 9780373035564
Number: 1
Product Description: To Claim a Wife
Universal Product Code (UPC): 9780373035564
WonderClub Stock Keeping Unit (WSKU): 9780373035564
Rating: 4/5 based on 2 Reviews
Image Location: https://wonderclub.com/images/covers/55/64/9780373035564.jpg
Weight: 0.200 kg (0.44 lbs)
Width: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Heigh : 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Depth: 0.000 cm (0.00 inches)
Date Added: August 25, 2020, Added By: Ross
Date Last Edited: August 25, 2020, Edited By: Ross
Price | Condition | Delivery | Seller | Action |
$99.99 | Digital |
| WonderClub (9294 total ratings) |
Edward Thomas
reviewed To Claim a Wife on February 09, 2016Bring on the pain! If you're in the mood for a heroine being put through the wringer of emotional and physical pain this is a good one.
The poor heroine in this truly needed years of therapy to deal with her childhood, but in Harlequin Land true love fixes all. If you can go with that and are an angst-junkie, this is a worthwhile read.
I've just discovered Susan Fox and she really is a good writer even though I'd like to slap her heroes upside the head with a blunt object. Her prose is very readable and flows well. I don't feel like I'm slogging through. From what I've seen it appears her niche was contemporary westerns (I understand she no longer writes).
The heroine is raised on a ranch. The people in the town are horrible! Confirms my suspicion that most people are decent individuals, but if you get them into a group everything quickly sinks to the level of the lowest common denominator. I'm a cynical old b*, obviously.
The heroine was 8 when her mom died. After that she was pretty much left on her own. She got some affection from a few of the old ranch hands, but her dad was a cold, cruel, POS. Then her dad meets a new woman and things get even worse for her. This woman has a son close to the heroine's age and another who is 10 years older and not around a lot as he has taken over the responsibility for his dead father's ranch (he turns out to be the hero).
The heroine's father immediately embraces the hero's younger brother. He makes him the son he never had and neglects the heroine even more, if that's possible. This younger brother is also a spoiled piece of work who is cruel to the heroine whenever he thinks no one is looking. The step mom is just as bad.
The hero was around off and on during these years. He senses that the heroine isn't being treated fairly and tries to be kind to her when he's around, but when she becomes a teen and he senses she has a crush, he distances himself not wanting to get himself into an inappropriate situation with an underage girl. This hurts the heroine greatly since he was her first/only love and she feels she is always being rejected.
When the heroine is around 17-18, she is riding the range and gets caught in a flash flood. The hero's brother does save her from a gully that's gotten flooded, but then he proceeds to sexually harass her. He had a rope around her that he'd used to pull her up out of the water and wouldn't let her take it off and was making her feel threatened. The old ranch hands had heard him saying inappropriate things before, so when they come upon this situation they know what's going on and are determined to intervene. The ranch hands are a distance away from the action trying to get there on horseback. From what they can see the step bro is strutting around on the edge of a gully and keeping the heroine on the ground and pulling at the rope around her waist.
The heroine says that she cautioned the step bro (who was known to be a daredevil) to stay away from the edge of the cliff. He wouldn't listen, of course, and the ledge collapses. He drops the rope when this happens (luckily for the heroine), but grabs for the heroine's boot. She is, at the same moment, trying to scoot herself back from the crumbling ledge. With all the mud and panic, the step bro is unable to get purchase on the heroine's boot and he falls into the rain-filled gully and is drowned. The ranch hands make it to the scene in time to stop the heroine from jumping in to try and save the jerk and kill herself in the process.
The father and the stepmom blame the heroine and there is an inquest. The ranch hands testify to what they saw, but they do leave out the sexual harassment part. The kid is dead now and they decide it's probably not necessary to spoil his memory that badly. They feel it was obvious that the kid was being reckless and the heroine tried everything she could to save him and thought it sufficient to leave it at that. The judge agrees that nothing criminal happened and it was just an accident. No charges are pressed. However, the town still turns against the heroine, believing the stepmom's unfounded accusation that the heroine deliberately kicked the step bro away when he tried to grab for her boot. The heroine's father sends her away after the inquest, not wanting to even look at her. Luckily the heroine has inherited some $ from her maternal grandmother and is able to look after herself.
A few years later when the heroine is 22-23, she gets a summons from her older step bro stating that her father is dying and she needs to come home. She goes with a desperate hope that maybe her father has had a change of heart. He hasn't. He's still a bastard. The only thing he says to her is that he wants her to have a blood test and if she turns out to be his kid then he'll deed her half of the ranch with the other half going to the hero. If she fails the DNA test then she gets nothing. Then he dies before ever knowing the results of the test (this annoys me). But, at least now, the heroine has some sort of explanation for why her father never cared for her.
There is all sorts of drama while the heroine waits at the ranch for the blood test results. It's obvious the hero wants her, but he blames her for his little brother's death and finds his lust a betrayal. Then again, he sees things that make him feel compassion for the heroine. So he's all confused and reacts to it by being a complete and utter bastard for the most part with small acts of kindness tossed in here and there that just confuse the heroine more. All the while everyone else aside from the 3 old cowhands and the ranch's new housekeeper are complete and utter jerks to this poor girl.
The heroine finally decides she's had enough, she's leaving. She doesn't care about the blood test. She doesn't want the ranch. She has her own money and doesn't want to have anything to do with the town or the ranch. If the test comes back positive she plans to deed it all over to the hero and never come back. But, before she can make her escape the barn catches on fire. She knew it was some kids she'd caught smoking in there recently. She had even taken the two brothers to their parents and told them what they were doing and the risks, but instead of reading their kids the riot act they act all snippy that the evil murderous heroine would dare to scold their precious little angels. So guess what? The kids think they can freely smoke in the barn so they end up burning it down and the heroine is gravely injured pulling out the smallest of the two brothers.
Now the heroine is stuck in shit town. She has a severe concussion, a broken ankle, and burns she has to heal up from and no family to take care of her. The hero (having finally learned the full truth from the ranch hands) decides to take care of her. He also decides that there's no barrier to following through on his feelings for the heroine and sets out to aggressively pursue her. He also spreads the word about what really happened with his brother. That combined with the fact that she saved a child from a fire totally turns the tide of public opinion. The heroine is now the town darling.
The heroine doesn't give a rat's tiny a about their sudden 360. She still thinks the townfolk are a bunch of cruel, fickle, untrustworthy jerkoffs. Amen, sister!
The hero apologizes and he does take good care of the heroine in a bossy, I'm now controlling your life for your own good sort of way. He also insists he's signing over all his inheritance from his step-father to her regardless of what the blood tests may show.
She doesn't instantly fall into his arms. The fire happens around the 50% mark so there's plenty of time for the fallout, something that rarely happens. Usually all the secrets come out at about 90-95% and then we get a rushed HEA. The fact that we get to see him try to prove he's trustworthy and her tell him to get lost was a big bonus for me. I was thrilled.
Still, the hero was such a jerk in the first half that I can't give this 5 stars. I know his brother died and it drove his mom crazy, but he had absolutely no ability to see logic. Blaming the heroine made no sense no matter how any rational person looked at it. And the rest of that town! Ugh. What was wrong with those people?
Another thing that kept me from giving 5 stars was the fact that we don't know what happened other than the couple decide to marry. Was the heroine actually going to stay in that crap town and run her ranch around those narrow-minded simpletons? If she had any sense she would have sold the place to the investor who turned up in the end showing interest and then gone to live on the hero's ranch. I have a feeling that's probably what does happen, but you have to read the sequel about her crap cousin to find out.
Her crap cousin was someone who was like her sister who decided to turn against her too when the step bro died (apparently she fancied herself in love with him and a teenage crush obviously trumps a lifetime of sisterly affection). I saw nothing redeeming about the cousin in this book and have no interest in reading her story so guess I'll never know what happened. I'll just have to hope the heroine sold the ranch and left.
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