Harlequin Intrigue #346: The Desperado

What originally drew me to this book was the fact that it had time travel in it. I love stories with time travel in them. I had previously read some sci-fi stories which combined romance and time travel, and had really enjoyed those. When I heard about the Timetwist Series, which is a series that combines time travel and romance, I decided to buy all the books from the series which I could find. I read Ms. Rosemoor's book first. Despite the fact that I generally do not like books that take place in the Old West, The Desperado still managed to pull me in from the first page, and hold my attention until the end. I read the book in just two sittings, and I am not a fast reader. I instantly liked the character Willow. She is the heroine of the story. The main female character in romances is always referred to as the heroine, even if she is weak and unheroic. Willow is a heroine in the truest sense of the word. She knows how to fend for herself, and can save the day without the aid of a male. I love stories where females can kick major butt, and this is one of them. Another thing that made this book so good were the intricate details that the author included throughout the book about the characters and the settings. Some of these details are so small that you might not even notice them, but if you do notice them, you will find that the author gives them a very nice payoff by the end. I do not want to mention specifics, since it will give too much of the plot away, but it is little details such as these that makes the reader realize how much thought Ms. Rosemoor put in to this book before she wrote it. I have read romance novels which seem like they were written in a few days, and have recycled their plots from other books. Not surprisingly, those books lack depth and originality. The Desperado is not like that. It works on more than one level, because of the intricate details, but also because of the depth of its characters. In most romance novels, the hero and the heroine are the only 3-dimensional characters, and the other characters in the book are stereotypes and/or flat. It also seems as if you are not supposed to care that much about the secondary characters, and should be focusing your attention on the plight of the hero and heroine. With this book, that is not so. I found myself caring about some of the secondary characters, and wanting to know more about them. For example, Willow's sister Tansy. Tansy is the character who kick starts the plot. She runs away from home, and travels back in time to the Old West. She goes to the Old West since she is obsessed with a bounty hunter named Wolf Madrid who lived back then. Willow follows her to the past, since she is worried about the girl's welfare, and also because she wants to bring her back to the future. Tansy and Wolf are both well developed throughout the book, though not as much as Willow and the hero Ryder. By the end, I was itching to know more about Tansy and