Judith’s review of Unbridled
For as long as Alex could remember, life had taken everything from her. Her father abandoned her and her dying mother, only to return upon her mother’s death – with a new wife – to reclaim the family’s Wyoming ranch. Alex’s rage drove her away to Los Angeles to live with a man who could never satisfy her.
Only after ten years does she come home – and she hits the town with a vengeance, unleashing her pent-up lust on willing cowpoke Connor Matthews. But she’s in for several shocks. It turns out that the ranch is now a resort, that her late father split the estate between Alex and her young half brother, and that Connor – the bucking bronco she wants in her bed – is running the place.
Now, Alex is torn between accepting both a new family and a lover who can give her everything she needs, or selling out to a smooth-talking neighbor and leaving the last behind her. But only when her life is on the line does she realize what she desires more of all.
All of us know that human experience can bring a wide range of emotional challenges into our lives, all the way from ecstatic joy to deadly depression. We also understand that often the people who we trust the most can disappoint us the worst. Perhaps it is safe to say that there is no worse betrayal than that of a parent toward a child, a youngster who is hurting and vulnerable from other circumstance. So it was with Alex Finley, the heroine of our story, who not only got left with the full responsibility of taking care of her mother who was dying of breast cancer, because her dad was unwilling to face his wife’s illness or his responsibility to keep his vow: in sickness and in health. The last month of her mother’s life was horrific and filled with her mother’s painful pleas that her daughter and friend would put her out of her pain. What a “trip” for a 16 year old teen. Now, facing the death, the responsibility of those final funeral arrangements, the burial, the last good-byes–Alex’s dad shows up at the funeral with a girlfriend on his arm, a woman he has met in Denver where he had taken up temporary residence. Alex’s anger and sense of betrayal knew no bounds, and as soon as the funeral was over, she took off in her mother’s old broken-down Buick, hightailing it for So. California, where she somehow managed to survive and thankfully met an older man who took her under his wing. It was not a sexual arrangement; David was for Alex all that her father should have been–providing emotional support, food, shelter, and eventually an education as an accountant. However, upon David’s untimely death, greedy for his huge estate, his relatives escort Alex off the property with only the car David has given her and money she has managed to save working for him as his accountant for eight years.
So we have a wounded woman, old wounds and new ones added, and she is now returning to Wyoming to the Finley Ranch, the only place she has to go. Hoping somehow to make peace with her father, she drives straight through only to discover that her dad has been dead for two years, and the home she had hoped to find has now been turned into a “guest” ranch resort. Alex now is convinced that her dad not only withdrew his support and love 10 years earlier, but has now stolen her home and any hope of recouping some stability and closure in a life that has so-far been a bust.
This novel almost reads like a Greek tragedy where a bad story only gets worse. It does indeed seem as if this woman is facing the anger of the Fates and her future is bleak indeed. However, even as she is informed of her father’s will giving her half of the ranch–providing she remains on the ranch for a year–and she discovers that the girlfriend eventually became her stepmother and that she has an 8 year old half brother, there are teeny tiny evidences that her dad did remember her, did remember important things about her, and that there are clues that perhaps she was more important to him than she formerly believed.
This story could be characterized as an all-out assault on the emotions of the reader. With her usual flair, Ms Williamson has crafted this story with its edgy and flawed characters so that they become real, with the story reading more like a episode in history instead of fiction. It embraces the fast-paced life of Southern California and expands into the huge open spaces of Big Sky Country and the plains and ridges of Wyoming. The reader is acutely aware of Alex’s deep hurts almost from the beginning, and I felt as if I was assuming the position of a cheerleader as she passed the town limits of her home town, or rounded the bend and saw the ranch for the first time in 10 years, or found her father’s favorite horse still remembered her, or formed a very tentative bond with Daniel, her half-brother. There is never any doubt that she needed to relent in her fierce anger and grieving over her abandonment, both physically and emotionally 10 years earlier. But this story wants us all to face the need to not only forgive those who hurt, who manage to make a complete mess out of situations through their selfish actions or unthinking decisions, but also to forgive ourselves for the actions and decisions that often complicate an already bad set of circumstances. There is great friendship and loyalty here in the persons of Alex’s two friends who take her in after David’s funeral, who share their love and friendship for her in one night of beautiful menage loving. There is betrayal and disappointment as Alex faces the flaws in her dad, his failure to love her and her mother enough to wade through the horrors of death with her. But there are also opportunities for renewal and rebirth and reclaiming one’s heritage, not only as a Finley, but as a person who can love and be loved, who can accept life’s blows and still manage to live triumphantly, not as one who is “under” the circumstances.
I read this book in one sitting. It claimed me from paragraph one and moved me through this compelling story almost as if I was being pushed and shoved by a huge earth moving machine. In a culmination of over-the-top writing, a plot that can be successfully expanded and which formed the foundation of a beautiful love story, and characters who are strong enough to stand on their own, Ms Williamson has given her faithful readers a contemporary Western romance that will blow you out of the water. I just can’t find anything about this book that I didn’t like. Suffice it to say, that for those who have fallen in love with her American Western historical romances, this novel will be different only in its time frame, but it still bears the mark of the expertise of one of our best romance writers. You would do yourself a favor to buy and read this book.
I give it a rating of 5 out of 5.
You can read more from Judith at Dr. J’s Book Place
This book is available from Berkley Trade. You can buy it here
Loved this book. Read it last year & I still sigh over Connor LOL.