I disliked this one. Its a book that starts off with its grimness strongly when we first meet our heroine Johanna when her parents has just been murdered and her sister abducted by mexican bandits.Her sister Jacy is later found traumatized after being raped ,she is also pregnant with the rapists baby and has become mute from the ordeal.

Fast forward and the heroine is working as a singer/guitarplayer in a salon (she is really a teacher but no one will hire her after her sister was "ruined") She is approached by a lawyer who offers her a position as a housekeeper to an old wealthy man living in a secluded valley. Thinking its a better job offer than she had so far she accepts and packs up her sister to go.

On the way there the sister catches the eye of a man and he is very kind to her. They later learn he is the old mans illegitemate son. So they come to the valley and it turns out the old man is horrible and he didnt want a housekeeper. He just wanted a blue-eyed and blond woman to come to the valley to marry his OTHER illegitemate son and have blonde blue eyed grandsons since he hates the thought of his son marrying a Mexican girl.

The heroine then encounters the son,Burr who is a big and rude man and dont want to marry a saloon girl (read prostitute) and definetely not one chosen by his hated father. Well what is Johanna and her sister to do but stay until she can leave the valley in a few months time when the caravan comes through next time.
Things are complicated when her sister Jacy and Luis deepens their relationship and decide to marry. All the while Burr and Johanna fighting and misunderstanding each other culminates in her losing her virginity to him. Now they have to marry each other anyways but they are actually in love deep down,even though he flaunts his mistress in front of her. Charming. All the while there is a subplot with Old Macklin threatening to sell the valley and disinheriting his sons.

Its just a lot to unpack here this is an older romance so I was expecting non-politically correct behavior but I didnt expect the sheer amount of description of women being abused. Did things like this happen back then and happen to even to this day? Yes of course but I thought I was reading a romance and instead we got the rundown about how the old Macklin was scum to pretty much everyone he met. Many of these were women.

Burrs mother was "rescued" by Macklin when her familys caravan was attacked by native americans and then she is raped and abused by him. She completely loses her health and dies after a few years.

Then we get Luis mothers viewpoint and its about the same thing. Then a very young native american girl is raped by that pervert Macklin (for some reason the author thought it appropriate to add that it actually felt good to the girl. WTF?) The native american girl is then taken as the third wife/slave of another man of her tribe and we get a lot of scenes where is she beaten and further sexually abused. Leading up to her nurturing a revenge all these years and finally suceeding to kill Old Macklin. No one is really sad about this.

But the whole book was weighed down by these constant barrages of grim flashbacks.The only thing I can find was nice how the sister Jacy could process her trauma and find a loving relationship with a man after what she went through. The romance between Johanna and Burr I merely found tedious. Apart from the female abuse everything in this book was very lacking in that something that makes it readable and with some strange writing choices made by the author.

The ending of the book is wrapped up by Johanna inheriting the valley,but hold on Old Macklin didnt own the valley it is actually owned already by Burr and Luis...and the man who was wanting to buy the valley was actually an agent of Old Macklins brother who just wanted to reconnect with his brother and nephews. TEH END ( )