ISBN 0671010107 - There seems to be a few reviewers here who expected - or hoped for - more than a shallow romance novel in One Red Rose and were disappointed. Since I think all romance novels are shallow romance novels, no disappointment here! Let's get the negatives out of the way first: the West (as opposed to today's "the west") is often said, historically speaking, to have been more open-minded about race, hard work and honesty being more important than color. However... the fact that race was an absolute NON-issue in this book was a little hard to accept. I admit I haven't yet read any of the others in the series, so perhaps they covered that sort of ground and Garwood didn't want to beat the topic to death. Still, the book only had two clues to the fact that the characters were black. One was the reference to a couple people being former slaves and since not all slaves were black, that was kind of vague. The other was when Genevieve was asked to pose as Ruby Leigh Diamond, formerly Alice O'Reilly, and she pointed out that her ancestors came here from Africa, "Surely you noticed."
That aside, romance novels are generally fluff, and this one is no more or less fluffy than any other I've read. Adam Clayborne lives in a now-empty house on the family ranch in Montana. His brothers have married and moved away and Mama Rose has it in mind to get Adam married, too. She's even picked the woman out for him, AND invited her to the ranch for the family celebration of Mama Rose's birthday. Genevieve is beautiful enough, but Adam is happy as a bachelor. Luckily for him, she doesn't want to marry him, either. Or so she says - but she says a lot of things that aren't true. For one thing, she says she's not in trouble. If that were true, why does she run off when a telegram arrives, without even saying good-bye? Adam is determined to find out and chases after her.
Standard romance novel ending, with the usual formula along the way. One highlight (or disappointment, depending on why you read this genre) was the lack of heaving and aching, et al, that generally takes up several pages and makes it possible for the author to get away with less storytelling work. Sadly, that took One Red Rose out of the running for my "worst line in the world" contest. There was a funny moment to me when, having run away into the woods with a night's lead at least, Genevieve is caught up to by Adam. She cuddles up against him and the line "She smelled so good to him..." cracked me up. A full day of riding hard to get away and she smells good? Please.
IF I come across another book by Garwood, I'll read it because I'll read anything, but I wouldn't expend any energy trying to find the rest of this series.
- AnnaLovesBooks
