More Characters for Kaki: Book Review of Where the Horses Run

It was nice to read a Kaki Warner novel that didn’t have rape and murder in it. - I recently finished her latest, Where the Horses Run. - I guess it was because this one takes place in England rather than the wild American West. 

Where the Horses Run is part of the Heroes of Heartbreak Creek series.  The characters from Heartbreak Creek all make an appearance, even if only in the words of another character.   Ash and Maddie, the main characters from Colorado Dawn as the prime auxiliary characters in this book.  They travel to Scotland and England with Thomas Redstone, who has been an important character in all the Heartbreak Creek novels. 

Thomas is sort of Heartbreak Creek’s Mr. Spock.  never primary, always a large role and a clear outsider who’s half insider.  Thomas is a Cheyenne Indian whose grandfather was white and who sometimes serves as deputy sheriff, a very white role, but very much with his Cheyenne personality.

The Kirkwells – Ash and Maddie – also take with them a new character, Rayford Jessup, who is this book’s male love interest.  Along the way, he meets Josephine, the book’s female protagonist.  She loves horses; he’s a horse wrangler.  There you go.

Where the Horses Run is a much slower paced book than Warner’s others.  I, for one, appreciated that.  I could put it down and come ack later, but still found it enjoyable and a good read.  there were no horrible stomach knots this time and no tears. 

There also seem to be fewer lusty scenes, which is just fine by me.  Though I was disappointed by the ones that are here.  they felt like words instead of emotions.  Ruth Okediji’s descriptions of steps the World Intellectual Property Organization can take to reposition itself in Balancing Wealth and Health were more emotionally resonant than Kaki Warner’s intimate scenes in this book.  There must be other adjectives to describe nipples besides “puckered,” which isn’t a very pleasant sounding way for nipples to be – sounds course, hard and painful.  How about alert? dancing? robust? apprehensive? peaked?  I don’t know; I’m not a romance novelist.  But puckered made my nose squinch up in discomfort and distracted me from connecting with the words on the page.

Josie is a delightful character.  Strong yet feminine and although she’s got a history to make her interesting, she’s not broken and doesn’t need fixing.  Rafe is broken.  Rafe has an interesting history, too, but we never really get the whole picture.  Maybe that will come out in a future story.  Some great fan fiction could be written about his past.  There’s just enough bits and pieces given.

Thomas’s character is continuously flushed out throughout the Heartbreak Creek novels, and it works well.  Because of this, he has more depth than any other character and it’s about to pay off.  The next book will focus on him and Prudence Lincoln, the half sister of the first novel’s protagonist (Edwina Brodie in Heartbreak Creek).  I can’t wait!

 

Other Kaki Warner book posts:

1. Pieces of Sky
2. Open Country
3. Chasing the Sun
4. Heartbreak Creek
5. Colorado Dawn
6. Bride of the High Country