This Time Forever
4.5 rounded up
Fantastic story. The hero's a "half-breed" "no-good cowboy" who has spent his life riding rodeos. On the way to a show, he hitches a ride with the wrong person at the wrong time and ends up being accused of murder. The heroine is on the jury that sends our hero to prison for the crime. You don't see that plot often, do ya?
The hero was seriously poor and wasn't really husband material but you rooted for him anyway. The heroine was a Mary Sue but she had her weaknesses that made her real.
There are a lot of tough topics in the story: prejudice, racism, poverty, disability, but I never felt weighed down. The book didn't need a rich and perfect hero to complete the story. It was actually refreshing to have a more realistic male lead...relatively speaking, that is, since I'm sure there's not a lot of half-breed has-been rodeo stars who are sent to prison for murder and end up with a juror who happens to want to adopt his disabled son he had no knowledge of.
Now that I've more or less just embellished the book synopsis, I'll just say that this one comes highly recommended but not for the usual WTFery. It's just a really good, well told story.
