In the first The Raines of Wind Canyon book, Sarah Allen is heading home to Wyoming after the death of her criminal husband. While in route, a snowstorm stalls her car and the boy she spurned in high school helps her out.
Jackson Raines is now a rugged cowboy and wealthy ranch owner. He’s always wanted Sarah, but he doesn’t trust her. When trouble follows her to his ranch—where she’s renting a cottage—he has no choice but to help her.
I liked Sarah and Jackson for the most part. She confided in him for the first half of the book, but then she started keeping secrets and stepping back from the relationship in the latter half. Jackson often made decisions that involved Sarah and her daughter, Holly, but he didn’t consult Sarah over it. These issues prevented me from enjoying the H/h in full.
The mystery/suspense plot carried the narrative. Someone was harassing Sarah, which sent her and Jackson on an adventure to find and stop that someone. Hot sex and building emotions were thrown in.
Dev and Gabe, Jackson’s brothers, were interesting, and I’m looking forward to reading their stories. Jimmy and Nan’s off-page romance kept my attention, but I’m not happy with how that ended. Hopefully, their relationship will be sorted out in another book.
Other than some pacing issues and minor repetition—almost every chapter ended with a similar phrase—I liked the story and the characters. There weren’t any spelling mistakes—that’s always nice!—but there were a few stray POV jumps.
Ms. Martin has created an interesting world, and I’d like to read more.
3 Stars
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Sarah Allen, finally freed from an abusive marriage by the unsolved murder of her husband, gathers up her young daughter and the few possessions left to her after everything is sold to pay her husband's debts, and returns to her childhood home of Wind Canyon, Wyoming. She's rented a small house on the property of one of the local ranches, and landed a job with the local newspaper,. She'll finally be putting her journalism degree to some use, and as a bonus she'll be living near enough to visit her last surviving relative, her grandmother.
But Sarah's troubles aren't over yet. She's getting calls from a former business associate of her husbands, who is quite certain that Sarah knows where Andrew kept a disk or flash drive with some vital information. And the owner of the ranch she's moved onto is Jackson Raines, whom Sarah yearned for and spurned in high school. Sarah and Jackson resist their mutual attraction while the calls get more threatening--but when the calls progress to the trashing of Sarah's cottage and her grandmother's home, she has no one to turn to but Jackson.
Trouble keeps closing in on them, as the FBI threatens Sarah with charges to force her to give information she doesn't have about Andrew's business activities, and his former associates get more violent in their pursuit of that flash drive. And there's still one secret Sarah is keeping from Jackson, something she knows will kill his growing love for her.
This is a well-written romance with interesting, likable characters, and the added bonus that no one does anything stupid or creates a willfully stupid misunderstanding in order to create necessary plot complications. Sarah's secret reason for pulling back is real and serious, and Jackson reacts like an adult, not an over-reactive teenager. These are solid adult characters, well worth the time spent with them.
Recommended


Note:: I received a free electronic galley from the publisher via NetGalley
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Against the Wind
2 Stars

Synopsis:
Following the murder of her abusive husband, Sarah Allen returns to her home town in Wyoming to start afresh. Unfortunately, trouble seems to follow, first when she rents a cottage from Jackson Raines, the man she rejected and humiliated in high school, and then when her husband’s enemies become convinced that she has something they want and are not above kidnapping Sarah’s daughter to get it.

Review:
Starts out really well but becomes exceedingly far-fetched as the book progresses. There are just too many individual storylines. In addition to the main plot, in which the heroine has not one but four men out to get her for different reasons, there are another two side stories. The first involves a tiresome romance between Sarah’s friend and Jackson’s foreman and the second centers on illegal logging, which is completely irrelevant and unrelated to the main story. Two of these various plot threads remain unresolved at the conclusion. Maybe they will come to an end in the next installment but quite frankly I’m not interested enough to find out.

The main characters are well fleshed out and have an intense chemistry but I did not feel the romance. While Jackson’s caring and sensitivity make him an especially appealing character, Sarah is annoying and distant. I found her need to keep secrets and her inability to trust Jackson with the truth irritating, and actually felt that he deserved better. I also thought that his initial resentment toward her for the way she treated him in high school was resolved far too easily with a rather weak apology.

In general, the book is well written but the flashback scenes in which Sarah remembers what happened to her husband are extremely repetitive, in fact, the author just copies them word for word each time with a few details added. There is also very little build-up of tension and suspense, and I kept waiting for the something significant to happen.

Overall, a very disappointing read and one of the few books that get my 2 star rating. I may not be reading any more in the series. ( )

Good book that kept me interested to the end. Sarah has returned to Wind Canyon after the murder of her husband. She had left town in search of a better life and thought she found it, only to find that her husband was abusive and a crook. She has sold everything to pay his debts but is still being harassed by people who are looking for something he had. She has gotten a job with the local paper and rented a cottage for herself and her daughter on one of the local ranches. Then she discovers that the ranch belongs to Jackson Raines, the guy she treated so badly back in high school.

Jackson and his brothers were the local bad boys. Their parents were drunks and the boys were constantly in trouble. Jackson had left town after high school and ended up making a boatload of money. He then came home and bought a ranch. He's not at all happy to find Sarah on his ranch, as he still remembers his humiliation at her hands. She appears to have changed, but he's not inclined to trust her. However, when trouble follows her to Wyoming he steps in to help her.

I liked Jackson. He is the type of man that can't walk away from someone in trouble. Though he isn't sure whether he can fully trust her, he can see that Sarah is in bad trouble. I liked the way that he wants to help her find out who is after her and why. He is also still attracted to her which adds to his desire to help her. As he learns more about what her marriage was like he's impressed by the strength she showed to survive it. Though he hasn't had any plans to marry the more time he spends with Sarah and her daughter the more the idea appeals. I really liked the close relationship he has with his brothers.

Sarah was a little harder to like, at least at the beginning. Her treatment of Jackson in the past had been needlessly cruel which didn't set a good tone. I was a bit more sympathetic to her as more details of her marriage were revealed. It was a little hard to believe in her quick relationship with Jackson as I expected her marriage to have had more of an impact on her feelings about men. She comes to love him very much, but fears what her troubles could do to him so she tries to end things. She also has more issues from her marriage than she has told him about.

The mystery itself was pretty well done. Each time that Jackson and Sarah think that they have made progress something else is uncovered that leads them on another chase. There were a few things that went on that stretched believability a bit, but overall kept me involved. The final confrontation at the end was definitely intense and kept me wondering if everyone was going to come through it okay. There was a very interesting twist involving the identity of her husband's murderer that I really didn't see coming. ( )

against the wind by kat martin, i am used to darker side of books by kat so when i first started reading this one
i was happily surprised to find out it's a family type novel. a woman returns home after her dead husband leaves
her in so much debt she can't recover. she brings her daughter back to where she grew up also and got a job at the local
newspaper. it's a wyoming setting which i touched on a few days ago with a different author and love the descriptions of
the scenery and nature. this appears af if it's going to be a series set in the same town, just differnt family members.
i love this type of series. just when they were what they thoughtt to be close to finding out who was at fault they uncovered
way too many more things about the companies her husband had swindled. love how this story shows how much one loves another
without words but by doing things for her and her daughter. ( )