When a Texan Gambles (Wife Lottery Series #2) Book

This book was SO DUMB I'm afraid reading it might have caused some brain damage.



So it starts out with a mail-order bride trope. A western historical romance. Great. I love that. Let's see what we actually get.

The heroine... I have no words. She was so awful, stupid and .... just... UGHHHH!!!!!

The first day of their marriage her new husband gets stabbed in the back. When Sarah sees him bleeding and he asks her to take out the knife she tells him he owes her, because she doesn't like the sight of blood.



How heartless do you have to be, to see another human dying before your eyes, your husband no less, and not give his life or pain any mind, only worrying about the mild discomfort caused to you by TAKING THE KNIFE OUT OF HIS BACK??!!

They have to run away, and there is no time to see a doctor, no medication available. So Sam has to just drink whiskey and sleep, hoping to heal. What about Sarah? Oh, she just yells at him for drinking, because she doesn't like alcohol. Again, no compassion whatsoever to the fact that he's in agony.

When he passes out in a fever near her, and all she's worried about is that maybe he'll try to have sex with her.



Guuuurl. The guy is HEALING FROM A STAB WOUND. I bet sex is not very high on his current list of priorities, especially when he's unconscious.

When he falls down and hits his head on her metal sewing box, she's worried about the sewing box. (I'm not kidding, this is an actual scene from the book)

She believes the very worst about him in every situation, even though she knows nothing about him and has no reason to believe these things. And when he tells her the facts, she doesn't believe him, of course. And yells and insists that he's an awful person. For no reason.

Right from the start, she refuses to sleep with him and he promptly backs off. But then she starts asking him to sleep by her side, then kiss her, then touch (but nothing more!), and after he takes all that without complaint, she starts parading before him naked - because she wants to feel like a woman, you see! And he doesn't seem very affected by her. And so when he tries to initiate sex with his wife, what does Sarah do? She shoots at him. Shoots. At her husband. With real bullets.



She misses, but that's beside the point. And how does Simon react to the violence his wife unleashes on him? Oh, he walks up to her and starts kissing her. Sure, no need to make it clear that shooting at you is unacceptable for your wife. Way to go, cowboy!

Sarah is the dumbest, cruelest, most heartless bitch I've ever seen in a romance book. And Sam, who is supposed to be this super badass bounty-hunter is later said to have "buried more than one coffin filled with rocks to give an outlaw a second chance." Sure. Because that's what bounty-hunters do, apparently.

Another major issue I had with this book: Sarah was a widow. And her first marriage? Of course, if the heroine is not a virgin, then her first husband MUST be:
- twice her age
- toothless
- rapist
- always openly saying he still loves his first wife and only her
- poor and loosing their home
- a general bastard who never talks to Sarah, never helps or does anything decent.

Sure, you couldn't give her at least a semi-decent friendly husband, let alone a good one who loved her and whom she liked? Of course, that's off limits.



Overall verdict: