River Lady

Two books into my "Worst Book of 2012" I think I may have already found the winner. It is so bad. It is so unbelievable and unbelievably bad. The characters are...bad. The plot...bad. The writing...bad.

Where to begin? A man of culture and money, especially in 1803, is not going to jump the gun and marry swamp trash just because she's pregnant. No. He's going to deny, deny, deny, and at the very most give the smelly swamp trash a little money now and then so eventually the kid can go into service when he or she comes of age.

Women of a fine pedigree and a certain means are not going to dedicate any time or effort to trying to educate said swamp trash and teach her all the areas of refinement in speech and manner. This does not happen. show more It never happened. The upper classes have spent hundreds, thousands of years keeping the muck at an arm's distance. They preclude any assimilation at any chance or opportunity.

That's just two semi-rational reasons not to pick up this poorly written, poorly plotted smear of literary pig plop. Which makes me think my job here is done. show less

Leah comes from a poor family, but she's always been fascinated with wealthy Wesley Stanford. When he mistakes her for a prostitute one night, Leah ends up pregnant. Forced to marry her, Wesley abandons her with his family while he builds a farm in Kentucky. He's irate because he always wanted to marry Kimberly, a beautiful and spoiled woman of his class. Meanwhile, his family takes to Leah and teaches her manners and what else she needs as the wife of a wealthy man.
This is all pretty good until Wesley returns, and the story 'jumps the shark.' Leah and Wesley head to Kentucky with Kimberly in tow to get a divorce there so that Wesley can marry Kim. Kim treats Leah as a servant, and Wesley changes his mind, but now Leah wants no part of show more him. From there, it just got more ridiculous.
I liked the first part, but the second half of the book was a disappointment. show less

A reluctant marriage of people from "two different sides of the tracks." Leah is a truly wonderful person and Wes will drive you crazy with his treatment of her. It takes him a long time to see what he really has in her. There are a lot of funny parts in here too like the mud fight and the women "cleaning" Leah up! You get to see the previous James River couples and we return to Sweetbriar as well which I loved!

This is my favorite of the River series. I really enjoyed it. Wesley has some serious frying pan moments, and Leah too, but it was really enjoyable.

Hated it, hated it, hated it.

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