Definitely made me blush, made me feel so
Sad for our protagonist Lydia . Very dark issues are in this book. But it does give to us a happy ending.
Favorite characters is Ma
Also Mr. Hill,

3,5

The first book in the Coleman Family Saga by Sandra Brown. Lydia Bryant is on the run and pregnant. She gives birth to a still-born baby in the wilderness. She is found by two young boys who bring her to their wagon train. Also in the wagon train is Ross Coleman and his pregnant wife. Ross's wife, Victoria ends up dying after giving birth to a baby boy. Lydia is needed to keep the baby alive.

I read this years and years ago and reread it recently and still loved it. About 2 people thrown together by necessity and slowly learn to love despite their circumstances. Both had their flaws and issues with the past but eventually love prevails.

Been sitting on this review awhile. I’ll keep it succinct. This book was angsty and there was a lot of passion. Yes, our H was a complete jerk to the h, but his reactions were realistic (I think!) for the time period. I loved our h. She was pragmatic and brave. I was upset that she let shame stop her from disclosing her evil stepbrother’s mal-intent, but I get that was the conflict the book needed in order to resolve. I have read spoilers about the next book in this series and have decided to stop and not read Bubba’s story. This book really did it for me. I love these characters SO MUCH.

Good story. Lots of angst. Loved the destitute heroine and arrogant hero with a bloody past. And how it all merged together. It seemed like a systematic story you read a hundred times in different ways so nothing was really surprising, but the way the author can build her characters is worth the read. And did I mention steamy? Yeah. Made it worth it.

This story begins with the unpleasant picture of a very pregnant teenager giving birth in the forest. Sometimes the language made me wince but would be the likely language of these characters. This is a post civil war wagon train to Texas story. Necessity leads to a bond, a difficult relationship and the question of can they learn to love. A man who lost his wife , left with a dying newborn baby. A woman who could save the baby’s life. A criminal who thought he had put his past behind him. A woman running from her past of abuse.

This novel was written by one of my favorite authors. I gave the book only 3 stars because the story was prolonged. The beginning of the book was great but somewhere in the middle I was thinking please get to the point or ending already. The characters held my interest enough to finish and I am a sap for a love story. The downside of reading multiple books by one author is the comparison and this book left me disappointed.

Did not like what Ross did to her and how he treated her, but other than that, the overall story was good and saved this from being a two star review (because of what he did).

*** 4.5 Stars ***

My first Sandra Brown book and it sure was a difficult one to rate. I really had to think about it hard. In some elements of the story, I really wanted to give it 5 stars, but other parts I found myself forgoing a whole star. I continuously wavered between 4-5 throughout most of the story, but finally ended up giving it a 4.5. The first reason is because of how much of a complete douche the hero was to the heroine. We're talking about over-the-top mean and foul-mouthed her at every chance he got. The second reason is because of how our heroine, Lydia, was your boring Mary Jane. The third is because I found the hero's obsession with Lydia's breasts during the whole book a little not to my liking. It had become strangely annoying by 3/4 of the storyline. Another thing I disliked was all the disturbing violence and crimes. Some scenes were just too much to imagine. But overall, I did really enjoy this book a lot. The drama, action, and suspense was, above all, better than in most HRs that I've read. Sandra Brown is a talented story-teller and her writing reminds me a lot of Linda Howard's.

Edit: I might change the review of this one as I continuously read more HRs. I find that my standards do change sometimes.

Another book I just finished today that was a very fine read in Gulu, Uganda. had to take a break from my financial non-fiction books for a bit of romance. This is a hotty with some real description of some loving! Now I need a cold shower...which is all that I get here in Africa anyway!

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I actually bought this book because of all the negative reviews for it. They were saying that the hero was cruel, that the plot was OTT, and that there was dubious consent. None of those things particularly bother me, and given that this was published in 1985 when that was basically the de facto standard for books of this type, I wasn't particularly surprised. But SUNSET EMBRACE doesn't pull back any punches when it comes to its problematic content. The story literally opens with the grievously ill heroine giving birth to a stillborn baby in a field that was the product of abuse.



**WARNING: SPOILERS TO FOLLOW**



From there, it gets worse. The heroine-- Lydia-- is taken in by a kind-hearted family who are part of a wagon train. She stays with them for a while, until we learn that one of the other wagon owners, a man named Coleman, has just had his wife die in labor. The family that took Lydia in decides that she'd be a great wet nurse for the hero, Ross's, baby, never mind the fact that he has nothing but bad names to call her, all variations of whore, slut, and tramp, and says he'd rather let his new son die than take sustenance at the bosom of a woman of ill repute.



Because THAT'S parenting!



But the matriarch of Lydia's savior family, known to us as Ma, is determined to play matchmaker, and Lydia ends up staying in Coleman's wagon... and from there, it gets worse. This book is like 300+ pages of diet lactation erotica. The hero goggles at her every time she feeds his son. At one point, he expresses jealousy that his son "knows what she tastes like." Eventually, he goes in for a taste of his own, because of course. We are constantly informed about the heroine's endowments, and how she doesn't fit into any of her dresses on account of her chest being too big. For some reason, her blouses keep getting wet, so their are lots of descriptions of her soaking wet "impudent nipples" and the like. During one sex scene, the hero implores for her to "nourish him" and the heroine wistfully bemoans the fact that she has no more breast milk to feed him with.



There's several side stories that are equally cringe. A couple of the teenagers in the camp have this really graphic and lurid affair with each other, and one of them is a girl named Priscilla who ends up becoming a prostitute at the end of the story (and her chest gets tons of description time, as well). Coleman's father in law is also running up a bounty on him because it turns out he used to be a bank robber and he believes Coleman only wanted his daughter for her fabulous fortune. And then, there's Lydia's step-brother-- the one who got her pregnant through rape-- who is now choking prostitutes to death when he's not planning on taking Coleman's bounty money for himself.



I don't even know what this book is. I've read a lot of WTFistically written bodice-rippers, but this was honestly one of the most squeamishly bizarre. In addition to all of the other stuff, the one Black character is threatened with a lynching for a murder he didn't commit (don't worry-- I believe he actually ends up all right at the end of the book), one of the villain characters throws the N-word around to show us all he's a bad guy, and the hero rapes the heroine after trying-- and failing-- to get it up in a whorehouse. Why? Because she was tending to a male friend with tuberculosis and he decided they looked too friendly, so he "punishes" her, a rape victim, with sexual assault.



I thought about giving this 2* at first because it was just so over the top and gratuitously awful that I was like, "Welp, I can't help but admire the ballsiness of this author." But I didn't really enjoy it all that much, and $3.99 was a lot to pay for a book I really had to force myself to finish. I did find this story morbidly fascinating but it wasn't pleasant to read, and in terms of WTFery that this author has written during her bodice-ripper years, I think I prefer SLOW HEAT IN HEAVEN.



1 to 1.5 stars

#RetoRita2 #RitaBrown

4,5 estrellas

Me encanta como escribe Sandra Brown. De ella sólo había leído Odio en el paraíso y, aunque ya hace un tiempo y no lo tengo muy fresco en la memoria, me gustó. Esta nueva incursión me ha encantado. Su estilo directo te mete de lleno en la historia. Es dura cuando tiene que serlo, descriptiva cuando toca, más intimista en otros momentos. He disfrutado los momentos íntimos de los personajes, como se va cociendo su historia poco a poco, como se van aferrando a esta nueva relación impuesta, como se van haciendo imprescindibles el uno para el otro. Los personajes secundarios igual de maravillosos y sumamente necesarios.
He degustado el libro y si algo le quita puntos quizá sea el desenlace. Todo se resuelve rápidamente y en un abrir y cerrar de ojos. Y sí, quizá ESA ESCENA sea ofensiva para muchos, el hecho en si y los pensamientos y reacciones de los personajes, pero creo que hay que considerarla en el momento histórico y en las relaciones de la época, aunque no tenga excusa.
Continúo ya con Un nuevo amanecer, porque estoy deseando saber que nos depara Jake/ Bubba, ese hombre de boa fácil, y Banner, que presumo mujer de pechos deslumbrantes como su madre (¿He mencionado que he acabado hasta el * de los senos de Lydia? Pues eso).