I don't mind a time travel book. Usually I enjoy them. And in this one the time travel wasn't the problem. Esmeralda was. She was conniving, two faced, dense, dishonorable and dumb.
Because the Brands in 1881 were bad people she assumed the Brands in 1999 are bad also in spite of mountains of evidence to the contrary. Esmeralda's plan is to seduce Elliott, get pregnant so he will marry her, divorce him and get part of the ranch as community property.
When Elliot DOES wants to marry her and says so in front of his entire family she yells at him and turns him down.
When Elliot is injured she admits exactly what she had planned to do, that she lied and schemed but she couldn't go through with it because he is the sweetest man she's ever known. 15 pages later she tells him that she changed her mind because she's too decent of a woman and that he deserved far worse than what she tried to do to him.
Esmeralda thinks, "First he told her didn't expect sex as a payment, and then he made love to her anyway." Apparently she hasn't caught on that having sex and making love are two different things
Also have these Brands never heard of "safe sex" or "birth control"?
I've never given a book in the Brand series such a low rating and considering how many books were in this series I suppose one had to be bad.