Title: Howard Haskell Takes a Bride
Series: The Brides of Paradise Ranch #0.5
Author: Merry Farmer
Publish Date: July 20, 2016
Publisher: Self Published
Format: Kindle
Page Count: 91 pages
Source: Kindle store, personal copy
Date Read: February 2-14, 2020
Review
A waste of time and effort, both on my side and the author's side. Seriously this is a contemporary erotic romance crudely and sloppily disguised as a historical novella. Even the cover is way too contemporary. Everything about this novella annoyed me - the characterizations were so shallow, you didn't want to jump into the pool for fear of hitting your head; the plot was so thin I wondered why the author bothered with having one at all.
Elizabeth is the spoiled brat of wealthy Cincinnati high society parents who wants adventure on the frontier and keep her money at the same time. Her parents were pushing her to accept and move forward with an engagement to one of her father's young business associate. This young associate gave a big whiff of being possibly gay, so yet another historical romance with an evil, possibly gay boyfriend coming in between the hero and heroine - I do not like this trend at all.
Elizabeth meets her "hero" Howard Haskell at a ball. There is a crap ton of telling about how physically attracted the two are to each other and how they found their one. This goes on for pages. One dance and then more monologuing about how attracted they are to one another. Howard is a blowhard egotistical ass, but honestly, Elizabeth is no prize either so I could see them having a HEA - for the rest of us not having to be in a relationship with either of them. There is a ton of sex scenes, mostly the outdoorsy type. There is a ridiculous foot race between bad boyfriend and hero to prove who was more worthy of Elizabeth's hand in marriage *eye roll*
There is no connection between this novella and the series it supposedly was the prequel for. So there is no reason to read this story to complete the series; there is no reason to read this dreck at all.