needed stronger elements and conflicts

Its okay, not has good as Radclyffe's other work. The characters for me are not developed as well as they could be and do not have strong enough conflicts. There is some drama in the novel but its limited to two events which seem minor compared to other novels by Radclyffe. Abby Craden does a great job narrating and the writing is high quality as expected from Radclyffe. I marked this 3 because, the story itself is bland in comparison with other novels, and the premiss of the the oil drilling romantic lead Clay and the conflict between her and farming Tess does not work that well, since they were previously a entangled. So the build up to their relationship is not as strong as it could have been, and they seem to simply fall back together without much hesitation. The conflict between the farmers and the oil company in my mind is not as great as it should be, and to a degree I would have preferred more focus on the farming way of life and love of the land so get more of a connection with the character Tess as a reader. Clay seems less believable as a character, since its hard to equate the rebel teenager to the now corporate project manager. That all said I like the idea of a story focused around farming and the land, more detail and events on that side of the story would have helped.

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Great story.

This is a great storyline and I loved the characters struggles that Abby brought alive in her exceptional performance. I definitely recommend this audio book.

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lovely

simple n straightforward story. loved it. abby craden's reading makes me want to listen to it over and over again.

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second chance

First love returns but for wrong reason, or is this fate. a really good story as expected from radclyffe, and excellent narration.

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It really fizzled out. I will lament the end.

I enjoyed this for the most part, however I do feel it fizzled out really badly at the end. I was expecting a nice little emotional confrontation between Clay and her father and his attorney, but all we got was Clay saying she would deal with them in the final couple of minutes. Plus we never really got the answer to the question as to why Clay's father was so invested in Tess's land either. It seemed to be a missed opportunity to make this story a lot meatier than it was, and that is a real shame.

I know Rayclyffe has her fans, and her work will always be popular, but sometimes I just wish the newer stories would hark back to her fanfiction days when there was more drama to the plot, which engaged the reader a lot more. When I think of those works I think of drama and some real suspense, but the latter non-fanfiction books just seem to be lacking that somehow. While this was not as bad as some for lacking those things, it still seemed to have missed opportunity's throughout the plot.

Another point to mention is the two main characters in Radclyffe's story 'When Dreams Tremble' make a couple of brief cameo appearances in the story-line. Yet it is not a sequel. This seems to be something Radclyffe does in a few of her books, and it works quite well as it allows you a brief glimpse into their lives after their main story has been told.

Abby Craden did a reasonable job with the narration, and again I know she has a lot of fans, but for some reason I find her tone hard to understand at times and I have to re-listen to parts in order to catch the words. I don't have that problem with other narrators, so I wonder if it's the engineering or her voice. I think it could be the recording because there was a definite break in the sound at one point in the story-line. Plus I have heard Abby Craden as narrator in a novel not written by Radclyffe and I don't have this problem listening to that recording. It might be something that the people doing the engineering works on this book might want to look into.

Overall I can listen to this again, but I will lament the real opportunity's missed.

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