Wild Rain: Women Who Dare

“The weather out in the Wyoming mountains can be brutal. Garrett McCray learns this the hard way when, after his horse throws him, he winds up caught in a blizzard. Luckily, he’s found by Spring Lee, a strong-willed rancher determined to make it on her own in the small town of Paradise. Though he came to meet her brother, Dr. Colton Lee, Garrett finds himself far more interested in Spring, while Spring gradually finds herself softening to the stranger and wondering whether sharing her life with another might not be so bad after all.

It’s a trope romance fans know well and yet still can’t get enough of, and I’m no exception. I loved Spring’s pride, and Beverly Jenkins carefully toes the line between softening her enough to accept the possibility of love without making her lose the strength that makes her so compelling. When she’s inside her protagonists’ heads, Jenkins makes the prose sing. It’s loving and luscious, and you can’t help but see how these two could fall for one another. (How could anyone not?) The story feels a bit flatter when other characters start to come into focus, and those scenes often feel more like snippets. It’s a shame, because those shallow scenes are the one thing keeping a great novel from becoming truly wonderful.”