Wyoming True

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Ida and Jake are both tortured and lonely. I love a good marriage of convenience story and Diana Palmer delivered. I enjoyed the chemistry between the 2 characters and the story was very engaging.<br /><br />Safety info: no virgins here, heroine was married twice. Her first husband was gay and her second husband abused her. Her second husband still threatens her.

DNF.<br /><br />Boring plus no interest in a heroine who plays at being a sexy flirty seductress in order to keep men away. There's a scene from the previous book where she's plastered up against a married man which makes his wife cry. In this book, she tells the hero about it and she's mad at the husband she flirted with. No thanks.

He pines far, far too.mich for OW, and the h is giving herself pep talks that maybe, maybe he will eventually care for her. Also, highly formulaic.

3 star-ing it because it’s DP. But in all honesty this was the most boring book I’ve read this year. <br /><br />The h is a divorcee with two extreme cases of ex husbands. One swung the other way and the next was a retarded, abusive druggie mafia person. It was almost funny how any and all possible streams of bad luck were added to Ida’s sob story. She’d been left rich thanks to her first ex-husband so that crosses off her wanting a man for his $$. Next comes the abusive husband so that has made her wary and extremely shy from advances from a real man. Ok so there’s your sweet and sad and bashful Ida who’s loaded. <br /><br />I could go on but really. If Ida later reminisced that she’d also donated her kidney to a cause I wouldn’t be surprised. Ida’s crippling accident is also unbelieving. With surveillance cameras on your a$$ I fail to see how Ida’s ex husband could throw her off the first floor and there’d be no witnesses or injuries screaming the truth. While here she was, wallowing in misery while her (now ex-) husband lied his way through her stay in the hospital. <br /><br />DNF eventually. Also bringing up Jake the H. He’s a supposed alpha but I’d call him out on that. He’s forever observing Ida’s facial expressions and claiming how much pain and hurt she’s been through in her life. He even notices Ida’s dark circles and says he knows she doesn’t sleep through the night. Lol. That was it on Jake. I don’t know any man like that who exists. <br /><br />Really. Ida sounded like she was 40 while she’s actually 26. Jake was sweet but also boring. They’d take off on a minute’s notice on plane trips to restaurants to have sea food. <br /><br />Also this supposedly shy, martyr Ida is slightly needy. She meets any man at all and here she goes tattling her sorry tale. Either you’re shy of men or you’re easy with them. And it was hard to be convinced that Ida was all that she claimed to be. Meh.

I’m not done, I’ll plug on for a bit. But my impressions are not good so far, just a few chapters in. I looked up the publication date a couple of times just to be sure it was recently published. It reads like something written decades ago! A scarlet woman? Someone no decent man would be involved with? A wild, promiscuous divorcée? Such an old double standard! How, exactly, did she build up her reputation and encourage gossip if she supposedly was a “frightened recluse” who didn’t want to deal with men? She also hates her beauty because it makes her attractive to men - gosh, I feel *so* sorry for her, how rough. And how long has she owned a bunch of horses without getting to know the local vet? Ugh.

I loved some of the stories before this one. I was looking forward to Ida's story.<br />That being said, the story was incredibly repetitive. For a private person, Ida suddenly started telling everyone and anyone exactly what happened to her in the same three sentences, no deviation. <br />The internal dialogue was the same over and over again. The entire book felt more like filler material than an actual story. And I was shocked to read how young Ida was, she was written as at least a 40 yr old.

This book was just awful and disturbing on so many levels. I couldn’t believe it was published in 2020; medieval moralistic attitudes of town’s people, nonchalant treatment of suicide of a young girl because of bullying and constant emphasis on money and how wealthy H/h are is distasteful and unforgiving in this day and age.<br />Apart from that, storyline is contrived and highly unbelievable in modern settings. Romance is lukewarm; for most of the book Hero is openly pinning for OW than suddenly turns around and falls in love with his new wife…..

Absolutely boring... worst read so far... repetitive story telling, unrealistic storyline... didn’t bother reading the whole book. Just flicked through pages to the end. Dissatisfied and disappointing read

Ah; this is Diana Palmer and her books occupy a different place in my heart ...<br />She has written something similar before; the wealthy misunderstood h and the in-love-with-someone-else H who randomly slut shames the h <br />But she gave it a little twist of originality; twice married h is no virgin although she is the next best thing to it ...<br />I had fun reading this one although H definitely needed skilleting for being stuck on OW for so long ..

I've been reading Diana Palmer's romance novels for the past 30-something years, and with the possible exception of Lacy and The Morcai Battalion, all of her other romance novels are formulaic, although this one is a little more up to date, slightly different (no swooning virgins), and while I enjoyed it a bit more than some of the previous novels in her Wyoming series, I still had more a few issues with it, which I why I'm giving it a 3-star rating.<br /><br />Wyoming True is the story of battered, broken and abused Ida Merridan, whose first husband was considerably older and who treated her like a princess, except for never having sex with her, something she really didn't question until his suicide note, 5 years later, explained that he was gay. She may be old-fashioned, as are all of Ms. Palmer's characters, but I can't imagine any bride not even questioning why her husband never attempted to have sex with her, and never wondering whether or not he was gay, impotent, or even asking him. <br /><br />Ida's second husband, Bailey, was a sadistic, evil, money-grubbing gambler, and an abusive jerk, whom she married after a very short courtship, and who was in prison for throwing her off the roof of a parking garage, breaking her hip, her leg, nearly killing her, and leaving her terrified of men. For all that, he was only only given a 5-year sentence, and as we learn early on, was out of prison in just 3 years for good behavior, and he still wanted his ex-wife to pay off his debts. In the interim, she's returned to her hometown in Wyoming, a very wealthy widow, thanks to her first husband, and established a rather odd reputation for herself as a slut, whose many lovers never measured up and who wasn't afraid to discuss their shortcomings in public--all in an attempt to keep men away from her. <br /><br />Jake McGuire is another ultra-wealthy character, who, when he steps outside the local diner, notices that Ida's Jaguar has a flat tire and overhears her on the phone as she's told no one will be able to get to her car for 2 hours, making her late for a medical appointment, so Jake, always a gentleman, reluctantly offers to get her to her appointment, and get her home safely. While he couldn't possibly have a worse impression of her at the outset, he eventually learns that she isn't at all what she seems, and although he's been nursing a broken heart since the woman he was in love with, Mina, married a friend of his, when he learns that someone has harmed two of Ida's horses, and that she's sure it's her ex-husband, he goes into protective mode, moves her into his home, and eventually asks her to enter into a non-sexual marriage with him--and although Ida is still not trusting of men, she agrees.<br /><br />Okay--at this point my willing suspension of disbelief snapped. First, Jake, although kind to Ida, can't stop mooning over his lost love, Mina, and at age 37, can't envision himself ever loving another woman again. Thirty-seven is a long way from over-the hill, and since he feels that his love life is over, why offer Ida marriage, when they merely could have lived together or simply become good friends and companions? Additionally, Jake is scarred from an IED explosion during his military service in Afghanistan, and is ashamed to even show anyone his scars. Ida is also emotionally wounded and scarred, yet accepts his proposal, knowing full well that he's in love with someone else's wife. Again, after a sex-free marriage to a much older, closeted, gay man, followed by marriage to a violent man she only knew briefly and which nearly ended with her death, why agree to another sexless marriage to a virtual stranger? <br /><br />We finally get to the supposedly suspenseful part of this romance, but all of the suspense happens off screen, so the build-up to Ida's ex-husband finally getting his hands on her and payback for the time he spent in prison because she testified against him, is over in a page or two, without the two of them even seeing each other again and it falls flatter than a flapjack. Bailey is painted as such a vile, evil character that the fact that we never even get to meet him didn't make a bit of sense to this reader.<br /><br />Yes, of course, there is an HEA ending to all of this, and yes, it's a well-written novel with two likable main characters, but it could have been so much better had Ida and Jake's relationship not been quite so unbelievable. While I'm sure that most of Diana Palmer's many fans will enjoy this latest Wyoming novel, for this Diana Palmer fan, it left quite a bit to be desired.<br /><br />I voluntarily read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.