Title: Heart of a Dove Series: Dove #1
Author: Abbie Williams
Published: December 5, 2014
Genre(s): Romance: Historical
Page Count: 336
Rating:
Summary from Goodreads:The Civil War has ended, leaving the country with a gaping wound. Lorie Blake, a southern orphan sold into prostitution at fifteen, has carefully guarded her aching soul from the disgrace forced upon her every evening. Two years have passed, leaving her with little hope of anything more. Meanwhile, three men – longtime friends – and a young boy with a heart of gold are traveling northward, planning to rebuild their lives in the north and leave behind the horrors of their time as soldiers in the Confederate Army.
Fate, however, has plans of its own, causing their lives to collide in a river town whorehouse. Forced to flee, Lorie escapes and joins them on the journey north. But danger stalks them all in the form of a vindictive whorehouse madam and an ex-Union soldier, insane and bent on exacting revenge. At last, Lorie must come to terms with her past and devastating secrets that she cannot yet bear to reveal.
Heart of a Dove is basically Laura Ingalls Wilder meets Francine Rivers’ Redeeming Love, but like…worse. This novel about a former prostitute on the wagon trail to Minnesota is mostly well-written, and I’ll admit that it really had me going there in the first half. But then Abbie Williams dumps the most ridiculous, manufactured conflict into the mix, and I just couldn’t deal. I literally went from thinking “aw, this book is so fun!” to “KILL IT WITH FIRE BEFORE IT LAYS EGGS” in the space of a single chapter.
Heart of a Dove is plain old crappy.
The main, overarching problem with the book is that Williams didn’t plot her story out very well. The set-up was good, but the middle section failed to set the appropriate tone, so the high-octane bananapants final few chapters felt jarring. (They would have been offensive on their own anyways, but we’ll get to that in a sec.)
The book begins with heroine Lorie being literally sold into prostitution. We spend a few chapters observing her life in the brothel, then she is summarily rescued by a nice older gentleman named Gus and his three friends. She joins the four of them on their trip to claim a homestead in Minnesota and slowly learns to value herself again. See, this part of the book is good! It’s very Little House on the Prairie-esque, and the chapters roll by full of mundane scenes of pitching tents, skinning deer, and swimming the creek. Lorie feels a close family bond with her four male companions, and probably a little something “more” with one of them, an angsty fellow named Sawyer. Naturally, Lorie and Sawyer fall in love, and all seems fine and dandy.
But at this point, you’re only 75% into the book, and the author feels that surely there must be some kind of reason to keep Lorie and Sawyer apart. What could it be?! Think think think…
Oh, I know! What if Lorie is pregnant! And what if the father of the baby is Gus, the kindly older gentleman who, prior to rescuing her from the brothel, was her last paying customer! And what if, instead of behaving like rational human beings and allowing Lorie to make her own choices, Gus and Sawyer have a little conference between the two of them and just decide (without her input), that Lorie must marry Gus because he’s always wanted kids and even though she and Sawyer are desperately in love, it’s just the right thing to do!
Like. Williams couldn’t think of any actual, meaningful interpersonal conflict to write, so the Big Reason the main couple can’t be together in this book is that…the hero and some other man make decisions about the heroine’s marital future on her behalf?! That was honestly the best she could do?
(Aside: it is clearly stated that Lorie has sex with 15-20 men per night during her time as a prostitute, and the author honestly expects me to believe that the father of her child MUST be Gus, just because he was the last person she had sex with? Really?)
Anyway. So what does Heart of a Dove do after the author has so brilliantly written herself into this corner, where Lorie is literally weeping nonstop over being married off to a man she doesn’t love, and where that same man is basically…raping her?
Not to worry, readers, because it’s time for some cartoonishly evil villains! In about two paragraphs, Gus is shot and Lorie’s beaten so badly that she promptly miscarries. Boom, problem fixed. Sawyer rides up, aided by the telepathic connection he and Lorie have as a result of their True and Abiding Love, and they ride off into the sunset after burying Gus. Perfect.
This whole final act is such a mess. Williams really has no idea how to sustain drama or tension throughout a novel, so she manufactures absolutely unbelievable nonsense and dumps it on readers all in one go, but swiftly pushes it aside before the Happily Ever After is seriously damaged by her ham-fisted attempts at creating conflict. Yikes.
And yeah, I did indeed say that Lorie and Sawyer have a telepathic connection a result of their True and Abiding Love, which is fated by the gods or whatever. It’s stupid, and I’m really tired. Don’t question it.
