Michelle McLean – A Bandit’s Broken Heart – Guest Post & Review

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Description:
A woman with a past…

Widowed mother, Brynne Richardson, gave up her bandit activities when she left California to make a fresh start with her young daughter in Boston. Working for a handsome doctor fulfils her need to be useful and independent, but he creates another yearning she can’t deny. 

A man with a purpose…

Dr. Richard Oliver assumes Brynne is just another debutante hunting for a rich husband, until she intrigues him with her steady hand for stitches…and guns. He can’t put her out of his mind, but the young widow has mysteries he’s determined to unravel. 

A love in danger…

When smugglers raid the much-needed supplies from the clinic, Brynne must resurrect her bandit persona for the good of the sick and the poor. Her secret life threatens to destroy everything she’s worked so hard to protect…her life, her family…and her heart.



Review:

Over the past few months I have read so many different genres, that  I need to thanks Barb and Sandy for asking me to come and review on this great page.
Anyway my review …….

I was a little hesitant to take on this book, but I  had to trust in Barb’s knowledge.
It was a great read. A Bandit’s Broken Heart by Michelle McLean is the second book in the McLean’s Blood Blade Sister’s Series. I don’t think you need to read the first book, but it does give a little insight into Brynne’s character. 

We meet Richard for the first time in this story. I really liked it.

This is one of those books that draws you in from the very beginning. The action starts from page one, and doesn’t let go until the very end. Even then, you want to keep on reading. McLean has penned such a bittersweet story set in the heart of Boston during a time when gunslingers and bounty hunters roamed the wilds in search of ways to make their lives a better place.

I loved Brynne from the very beginning, and found her to be a touching soul whose only wish is to do good in the world she lives in. Yet not everything falls into place for her. She has her up’s and down’s just like any other person, and makes do with the little she has with her. Her fighting spirit was a joy to read, and even when she was constantly ignored by societies ladies, Brynne kept her cool and carried on her own business. 

Richard is a doctor who is constantly being harassed by the ladies of Boston, they want him to marry their daughters, and so he has to daily has to fight off the ladies and their mothers. But upon meeting Brynne, he sees past the starch and social niceties, and decides to chase this intriguing woman.

The smuggling was probably my favourite part, there was a little action, and it was all kept fast and real. The way Brynne assumed command made a refreshing change, I know she was a previous Blood Blade “Bandit”, but sometimes the author tends to give the lead to whatever man is in the scene.

The secondary characters were strong in their own rights, but no too overpowering, and I look forward to the sisters catching up with the scoundrel who stole sister Lucy’s heart and their niece !!!

A Bandit’s Broken Heart is a great addition to the Blood Blade Sisters series. I aim to catch up on book one soon enough, and look forward to more when the time comes.

Reviewed by Julie B.

Copy provided by Publisher

There is something about a tortured character that just makes the reader in me sit up and cheer. A character facing a mountain of obstacles keeps me turning the pages. Will she prevail? Will she defeat the bad guy and get her man? I have to know. Sure, I feel bad these poor characters are so picked on. I’m often sobbing into the pages right along with them. But it keeps me reading.

As a writer, I try to create the same conflict. If I’m crying over my poor characters while I’m writing, chances are good that my readers will too. My sister is one of my favorite guinea pigs and nothing makes me happier than sending her chapters and having her call me in a panic, threatening me with a very painful death if whatever just occurred in my book isn’t rectified immeditately 🙂

Is it nice to torture my characters? Well, no 🙂 But it does tend to be the drama, the conflict, that drives a story…and you just can’t get that if your characters get everything they want and are happy all the time.

Brynne Richardson Forrester, the main character in my newest release A Bandit’s Broken Heart (Blood Blade Sisters 2) has already been through a lot. Her husband is murdered in book 1 and she moves to a new city in book 2 in the hopes that she can start a new life and escape the pain of losing the only man she’s ever loved. Things don’t work out quite as she’d like.

But there is hope, most especially in the form of the handsome Dr. Richard Oliver. She has a happily ever after on the horizon, but she’ll have to go through a great deal more to get there.

Ernest Hemingway, in a book of advice to writers, said that a writer should…“find what gave you emotion; what the action was that gave you excitement.”

I LOVE that quote. And it made me think, “What is it that gave me emotion? What gave me excitement?” Sure, I am happy when a character gets the guy at the end, or finds the treasure, or gets to live in the big pretty castle and lives happily ever after. But that isn’t what keeps me reading the story. What keeps me reading, what gives me goosebumps and makes my heart pound, is when the heroine cradles her dying husband in her arms…when she is on the back of a thundering horse, shooting a gun over her shoulder at the villain chasing her….when she made some stupid mistake and screwed up the good thing she had going….THAT kind of stuff makes me want to turn the page.

Did the husband really die? Will she get away? (Or will the retort of the gun knock her on her butt?…because that is always fun) 😀 Will she be able to fix her mistake and get the good thing going again, or has she just completely screwed up her life?

So, this is what I try to do to my characters. I want to give the reader a reason to turn the page, by giving my characters a reason to keep going, giving them something to fix, to resolve, to get over and move past. Death, pain, despair, torture, emotion, threat, danger….these all get the blood pumping, the tears pouring…and make that happy ending all the happier for the mess they had to go through to get there.

Michelle is the author of historical and paranormal romances, including TO TRUST A THIEF (Entangled Scandalous Jan 2013), a historical trilogy, BLOOD BLADE SISTERS (Entangled Scandalous 2013), and a zombie infested romance WISH UPON A ZOMBIE (Entangled Ever After 2013). She is also the author of the educational non-fiction book HOMEWORK HELPERS: ESSAYS AND TERM PAPERS.

Michelle has a B.S. in History, a M.A. in English, and tends to be a bit of an overly organized mess with an insatiable love of books and more weird quirks than you can shake a stick at.

If she’s not editing, reading or chasing her kids around, she can usually be found in a quiet corner working on her next book. Michelle resides in PA with her husband and two young children, an insanely hyper dog, and two very spoiled cats.