Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath

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The April book for Crystal and Jen's book club, Rake Appreciation Society is Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath. This is the first in her Texas Trilogy (although there's three books and one novella). This is an older book of Lorraine's and set in Texas!

This book definitely had a more western feel and I haven't read something like this since I was in high school and middle school. My paternal grandmother had a lot of small (harlequin probably) historical romance novels that I read back then. So this book actually has my favorite trope, wrong sibling! Amelia is a mail-order bride coming to Texas to marry Dallas, the owner of a fairly large ranch and looking to get a son and heir. He ends up breaking his leg and sends his brother Houston to pick her up. Houston has been badly scarred from the civil war and is very much the stereo-typical scarred hero. I absolutely loved this book and it was 5-stars up until about the 80% mark. They're travel to the ranch from Fort Worth is supposed to take a couple weeks, so we get a lot of forced proximity and even some only one bed. 

Amelia is not necessarily looking for love from her partner, but is very excited to have children and create a family. She's very talkative and was constantly asking Houston questions. Even though he was gruff and only gave small answers, I love that he still answered everything. I really enjoyed how into horses he was. I loved when Amelia convinced him to go after the wild horses how he just seemed to open up and really enjoy doing something he loved. It was such an important and lovely scene that brought them a lot closer emotionally. Amelia being able to watch how he was with the horses and let his guard down just really gave me all the "competence porn" vibes. 

Now I expected the angst and repressed feelings once they got the ranch, but where it really lost me was Amelia actually marries Dallas! I didn't like it one bit. She gets kidnapped right after so they never actually consummate the wedding, but I wish she was kidnapped before the wedding happened. I was practically yelling at Houston to say something during the wedding and really couldn't handle how he just stayed silent and then went to a bordello. Nothing happened, but I feel like we could've cut that part out. I don't know, it just really bothered me that it took multiple things to get Houston to tell her he loved her. I also wish that the rift between Dallas and Houston was addressed a little earlier. 

Overall I still really enjoyed the book and am super excited to continue the series. It's fun reading something different from Lorraine Heath. I've read some of her Regency romances and loved them and it was super fun to read something really far back in her backlist. It also wasn't as steamy as I wanted (especially based on her other books), but there was great tension throughout most of the book. Like I mentioned, I'll definitely be getting to Dallas's book soon, his looks to be a marriage of convenience which is always fun, especially with historicals! I'm excited this was the book Jen and Crystal chose and really enjoyed the discussion that was had (link to the video)! I can't wait to read the next book for the Rake Appreciation Society and am super excited for the books they announced through August!

Have you read Texas Destiny?

Bookishly Yours, 

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Texas Destiny, Lorraine Heath, 4-stars, 0 days, eBook, 384 pages, published in 1997