It’s always tricky to start a sequel to a book you’ve loved. Will it live up to its predecessor? Should well enough be left alone? I read Ms. Turner’s debut, the first book in this series of western historical romances about the four McCade brothers, and was blown away by the world building, writing style and the story Ms. Turner had produced. So, optimistic as I usually am, I requested the ARC when I came across Wyatt’s story while browsing on Netgalley and was happy and hopeful when I received the ARC.

The first chapters of Wyatt's story blew me away, pulled at my heart strings and I was totally ready to read well into the night just to see how Wyatt would manage to get Tess to change her mind about moving to civilized Boston and becoming a surgeon in a hospital there, when, to me, disaster struck and I had to put the book down. I picked it up the next day, but the hope I felt with respect to the story never returned. There was no challenge to overcome for Wyatt with respect to Tess (the solution was rather too easy and silly, I thought), and instead there were all sorts of challenges and hurdles thrown in about land, deeds, Chinese villains, and evil characters left over from the first book that threatened both Wyatt’s and Tess’s lives and their family’s future, but never their love. With a book marketed as a historical romance, I expect focus on the romance. I read these books for the fun of seeing how two characters somehow set on not being together, end up together anyway. I love reading tidbits about the time period in between bouts of banter and trouble, but these shouldn’t, for me, take center stage. In this book, to me, they did.

Next, I felt the characters were rather shallow didn’t show much growth. Wyatt was a bounty hunter, and he remained one. Tess was a doctor, and she too stayed that way, and she also stayed in Cheyenne. An example of suspension of disbelief with respect to characterization had to do with Tess. I loved that Ms. Turner chose for Tess to be a surgeon: a hands-on, no-nonsense profession that left no room for simpering miss plot devices. But, somehow, this go-getter had never had an orgasm, even though she was married for about nine years, had been a widow for a year AND was a doctor. So she must have had knowledge of the workings of the female body and should have been bold enough to have experimented on herself.

Finally. I frequently felt confused with respect to the backstory and wished I had reread Sawyer’s book before starting this one. Who was who, what was the relationship between the family and the villain(s) and what was the story again with the death of their father? I understand it's a narrow line between giving too much backstory too soon, or too little, but I wanted a short recap somewhere in the beginning when characters entered the story. Jus a few sentences here and there. For now, reading this book straight after the first book might be preferable.

Having said this, I have not yet given up on Ms. Turner. I hope that she, with the next books for the remaining two McCade brothers, will be able to focus more on developing and blossoming the romance between the hero and heroine, will give more attention to developing inner demons for the hero and heroine, and have the external demons (villains) play a more balanced, minor, role. And if Ms. Turner chooses to focus instead on suspense/action-plots, she might want to make that clear in the blurb.