The menfolk of Buckshot, California are rattled – Emma Taylor is back from finishing school, and she wants to fancify them. She insists they wear suits to the annual Valentine’s Day dance. Suits! When Emma sets her mind to something, she don’t give up. Look at how she chased Sheriff J.T. Phillips for years before her pa finally sent her away!
J.T. would do anything for Emma now that she’s all grown up – he’d even learn to dance. She’s the most breathtaking woman he’s ever seen. But when she offered her heart to him once before, he broke it… will she ever trust him with it again?
| Title: | Paper Hearts |
| Author: | Maureen Child (written as Kathleen Kane) |
| Series: | n/a |
| Pages: | 79 |
| Category / Genre(s): | Historical |
| Trope(s): | Second chance romance Small town romance |
| Point of View: | |
| Location: | Buckshot, California, US |
| Setting: | America, 1880s |
| HEA: | ✔️ |
| Release Date: | 11th March, 2012 (As individual book) 1st February, 1993 (As part of Sweet Hearts anthology) |
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So gosh-darned cute
This short book is set in a small town in the American West – probably in the late 1800s at my best guess.
It’s written in gosh shucks language that I would characterise as typical of the American old west which I personally thought was well done. It was actually really adorable. However, I’m very much aware that I’m not American so I don’t have the cringe factor that some might have if it’s not 100% accurate.
Emma was quite young and, I suppose, a little bit bratty, but I strangely loved that about her. I saw parts of myself in her that just wants everything to be perfect and wants everyone to improve. She’s got a determination and her good intentions tend to make her so single minded she forgets to check if it’s actually for the best or if the other townsfolk really want her ‘improvements’.
“[Maureen Child] made me fall in love with her characters as they themselves fell in love.”
J.T. was Emma’s complete opposite. Calm, cool, collected and completely befuddled by Emma and what was going on in her mind. It was hilarious to watch him scramble about trying to figure things out, especially while she was doing her best to avoid him and stop herself from loving him.
There was a spark of sexiness in the book – and surprisingly a sex scene despite the book being so short (79 pages) but it definitely falls on the cute and sweet side of the scale for me.
I’ve never read Maureen Child before but I liked her style. She made me laugh, she made me sigh and she made me fall in love with her characters as they themselves fell in love.
If you’re looking for a quick afternoon read to make you smile – I’d recommend this to you.
**This story was first published in the 1993 anthology, Sweet Hearts, under the pen name Kathleen Kane.**
USA Today best selling author Maureen Child is the author of more than ninety romance novels and novellas. Maureen is a five time nominee for the prestigious Rita award from Romance Writers of America.
When her kids were small, Maureen started writing as not only a way to stay sane, but in the hopes of finding a job she could do and stay at home with them. Sanity is still an issue, but she did manage to write her way into a career she wouldn’t trade for anything.
Over the years, she’s written under lots of different names and she prefers the term ‘pseudonym’ to ‘alias’. As Ann Carberry, she wrote western historical romances. As Kathleen Kane, she wrote not only Americana romances, but western paranormal romances as well. As Sarah Hart, she wrote one really spectacular western paranormal that is still one of her favorites. And once, Ann Carberry even wrote a Victorian historical which she absolutely loved doing.
Under her own name, Maureen writes short contemporary novels for Silhouette Desire—books she loves to write because of their fast pace and condensed story telling. Maureen is also writing funny, contemporary paranormal romances for NAL and darker paranormal stories for Silhouette Nocturne.
Maureen Child is a native Southern Californian who has recently moved with her family to the mountains of Utah where she’s learning to deal with snow on the road and deer in the yard.
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