Vietnam took her first love away from her.

Now it may take her next love, too.

After her husband dies, Gillian Warner realizes how many sorrows she carries inside her, including unresolved grief over her first love, who died in Vietnam decades earlier. Haunted by his death in combat and a tangled web of guilty secrets, she books a guided trip to the battle site.

The tours are led by cynical Vietnam War vet A.J. Donegan, who makes his living taking naïve Americans on what he calls Guilt Trips, Inc. If they're looking for peace of mind, they can forget it.

A prickly attraction sparks between Gillian and Donegan, with neither able to let go of the past without the other's provocative challenge. In a test of willpower and desire, they'll have to share much more than a journey to a place and a memory; they'll have to travel deep inside the walls they've built around their hearts.

By carriage, train, stagecoach,wagon, horse, ship or foot Historical Road Romances give us the joys of couple time, new scenery, and challenges. So, what if we wonder about bathing?

 

Here are some great ones for your reading pleasure! My list are never in any particular order...picking the top ten or so at this moment is hard enough. 

 

1. Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin 

2. Marrying The Royal Marine by Carla Kelly 

3. The Pirate Lord by Sabrina Jeffries

4. The Windflower by Laura London

5. Only You by Elizabeth Lowell

6. Tallie's Knight by Anne Gracie 

7. French Leave by Sheri Cobb South

8. Once a Princess by Johanna Lindsey 

9. Rachel Lemoyne by Eileen Charbonneau 

10. Lord Perfect by Loretta Chase 

11. Prisoner by Cheryl Reavis 

12. Wicked Becomes You by Meredith Duran 

13. The Lone Warrior by Lori Austin 

14. The Untamed Bride by Stephanie Laurens

15. Unlacing Lady Thea by Louise Allen 

 

Let me know your favorites!

 

To vote for the best of the best of Historical Road Romance, go to the Goodreads list. Overland: Best Historical Road Romance. 

 

 

To get recommendation for all the subgenres of Road Romances, take a gander at my Pinterest Board: On the Road: Best Road Romance. 

Well, nothing to write home about. The story was quite slow and the love seemed to come out of nowhere for our H and h. The ending was pretty decent.

I had a few issues. The father was absolutely horrid and I wished he in some way paid for how he behaved and treated his family. I suppose losing the daughter he expected to follow him into medicine was something, actually just losing one of his pieces of property but we never got to see his reaction to Jane leaving with Treager.

I thought it would be a bit more exciting based on the title but I was quite let down. I recommend only if nothing else sounds interesting...which is unlikely.

This wasn't a bad book by any means but it felt very heavy. For a romance it seemed utterly lacking in real joy until the very end.

The tone of the book is set somewhat by Catherine. She lives a half-life, sad about her inability to have children and abandoned by her husband because of it.

And then there is Joe and his youngest daughter Fitz. Joe's wife was killed in a car accident and his youngest daughter, seven-year-old Fitz is having emotional issues because of it.

Joe, Fitz and Catherine's lives intersect over a mother/child figurine that Catherine purchases on impulse. The figurine was actually owned by Joe but he sold it because he was short on cash. But Fitz was very attached to the figurine and wants it back.

I get the feeling that I was supposed to be happy that this lonely woman and this damaged man and child found each other. But I just found them to be somewhat enervating. They didn't lift me at all, on the contrary I found them somewhat wearing. Joe and Catherine, after a few head-butting moments, figure out that they really like each other and then they become lovers. The problem with the story is that there was no real conflict for them.

So we are left with filler and secondary characters that shift focus from the decidedly subdued romance. First there is Catherine's job. She works as a counselor? Den Mother? Life Coach? To a group of pre-teen pregnant girls who are given a sort of area-51 zone in their school where only Catherine and one other teacher work with them. These girls are young, yet hardened by life and their circumstances. Oh, btw, the other teacher has Cancer and her husband left her because of it (see....heavy).

Second is Joe's family. He has a predatory sister-in-law. A Clueless brother. And his oldest teenaged daughter, Delia, who acts as the primary obstacle in keeping Joe and Catherine apart. Normally I would find Delia's actions compelling, because children objecting to a new boyfriend/girlfriend can act as a definite obstacle. But the inclusion of the Brother & sister-in-law took the plot-line from potentially interesting to downright ludicrous.

But Joe and Catherine (and Fitz) get their HEA in the end. But even so, all I could think about was that this book went beyond angsty and straight into depressing.

Free on Amazon 07/19/2012.ARC on 06/03/2012.