MCKETTRICK'S PRIDE

Author: Linda Lael Miller ISBN: 0373771908 3/2007 CONTEMPORARY Publisher: HQN

The only wide-open space Rance McKettrick wants to see in his future is his hometown in his rearview mirror. The down-to-earth ex-rancher is determined to make a fresh start with his two young daughters—and leave his heartbreaking loss and family's successful corporation far behind. He sure doesn't need Indian Rock's free-spirited new bookstore owner Echo Wells confusing his choices... and raising memories he'd rather forget. But her straightforward honesty and reluctance to trust is challenging everything Rance thought he knew about himself. And when their irresistible attraction puts their hearts on the line, Rance and Echo must come to grips with who they really are to find a once-in-a-lifetime happiness.

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS:

Okay, so for all of you readers out there, have you ever had a book in your to-be-read pile and you absolutely, positively, cannot wait to read it, even if there are a hundred other things that you need to be doing at this exact moment? Have you ever picked up that book, left those hundred things waiting for a few hours, and read the ENTIRE thing? Well, good news. Linda Lael Miller's newest McKettrick offering IS that book. So, forget the laundry, forget dinner, forget the kids... okay, maybe not them... but send them to the mother-in-law's or pop in a movie for them because you will not want a single thing to interrupt this beautiful story.

Rance (I love that name!) McKettrick is the workaholic of the clan. He is always on a business trip to somewhere far away, always wearing a business suit and leaving his children home with his mother-in-law. Rance is running from his past in a bad way, and no one is going to keep him from that luxury. Being home is too hard for him. He has to face his daughters and remember how he failed them and their mother, when she was killed years ago. He has to face his lonely house and his sister's horse, and know that he has failed his sister by treating her like she was a bother, never knowing that she was going to die at the age of seventeen. Everywhere he turns, he sees the regrets of his past and he can't seem to shake it. He wants to be a better father, but his daughters remind him so much of his dead wife that, at times all he has to do is look at them and he sees her. All of this grief is sometimes too hard to bear, too much even for a strong man to endure.

Echo Wells is ready to start a new life. She has bought a storefront in a little Texas town called Indian Rock, and she intends to put her old life behind her and start fresh—no more lonely childhood and broken dreams. She is determined to put her past firmly in the past where it belongs. It is right about this time that she almost runs over the most gorgeous man that she has ever seen when she is pulling up in front of her brand new store. But soon, Echo is feeling all kinds of things that she is terrified to feel again, and she starts to wonder if this new life is going to be what she hoped it would. Along with all of these new feelings, old feelings start to well up—grief that has been long buried, remembrances of a lonely, unloved child, and later on a lonely, unloved adult. She has so many bridges to cross. She can only sit back and take the ride while she decides if Rance can be the man that she needs him to be and, in turn, make her the woman that she has always dreamed of being.

MCKETTRICK'S PRIDE is one of those soul deep books that takes your breath away. This book is all about the good and bad things that happen when you love someone, and how those things shape who you are. I read through tear filled eyes as Echo and Rance tried to overcome their inner demons and allow themselves to be the couple that they know they can be.

MCKETTRICK'S PRIDE is a tearjerker to be sure, but it also has some great funny moments that had me laughing out loud, and Echo and Rance are hot, hot, hot when they are together. This entire series is a winner, in my estimation. No one can write a Western like Linda Lael Miller. She sets the standard for this genre and does it beautifully, in my opinion.

Kristal Gorman