Starting a New Kaki Warner Trilogy

Another Kaki Warner book devoured in about three days.  When I get my hands on these things, I just can’t put them down.  I may be addicted.

I recently finished Heartbreak Creek, the first in her Runaway Brides series.  The four main characters of the series are introduced in this book.  What’s interesting, is that the series has four main characters, but only three books.  In some ways, this book was about two of the ladies’ stories, but only one of the stories really had an ending.  I wonder if the other lady’s story will continue through the other books.

In Heartbreak Creek, we meet a young Southern belle, widowed by the Civil War and now family- and plantation-less who decides her only escape is a new husband.  So she becomes a mail order bride for a Colorado rancher looking for a sturdy farm woman to help him raise his four children.  This poor woman can’t even cook!  That provides plenty of amusement.  Lucky for everyone involved, her half-sister goes along for the ride and is an excellent cook and has many other useful skills she’s able to share.

It bothers me a bit that the character who doesn’t seem to have her own book is this half-sister, daughter of this book’s main character’s father and mammy.  She does play a very important role in this book for most of the story, but her own love life is left unresolved.  I’m hoping that’s not the case by the end of the series.

As usual, I found myself laughing frequently during the story, gripping pages tightly in nervous anticipation and fighting to put the book down at 3am when I really needed to go to sleep.  No tears this time, but that’s fine by me.

Having read all of Kaki Warner’s Blood Rose Trilogy novels, I was expecting the same sort of plot line here.  I was pleasantly surprised.  While the novel does have a big climatic life-or-death scene like her other works, it doesn’t feel as much the main focus as in her other books.  This book feels far more about the love story and the everyday hardships of throwing yourself into a completely new world.  And, the adventures aren’t just physical safety fights, especially when someone suddenly winds up with two wives!

I enjoyed this book more than the last two I’ve read – and I liked those well enough.  I don’t know that I’ll ever find any of her other works as intensely, emotionally infiltrating as Pieces of Sky, but I’ve already ordered the next in this series.