Shelter Mountain by Robyn Carr
Perhaps I made a mistake by reading this book without having read the first in the series. But the synopsis made it sound like the story was independent of the first one so I thought it would be okay. And to some extent it was. There were obvious references to things that had happened in the first book, but some were explained fully enough not to lose much. Some however, were not explained enough at all. The Rick & Liz story was given a good background. I had some holes when it came to Mel and Jack though. For example, in one scene a guy came into the bar for a drink and Jack served him. I have no idea what followed that though. There was some reference to a trailer in the woods and Mel being called to midwife. I really have no idea.
Which brings me to my other major problem. You may be thinking to yourself by now, 'Why hasn't she mentioned the MCs of this story yet - Preacher and Paige?" Well the reason is, that although the book is supposed to be about Preacher and Paige, a significant amount of time was spent on these other characters and their own stories.
Once the Paige and Preacher story was set up and a few things happened...actually I take that back. More like one thing happened. Anyway, right there in the middle of their story, the focus switched to Rick and Liz and then Mike and then Jack and Mel. Paige and Preacher were virtually forgotten about for a significant amount of time. I've never read a book that lost such focus. Although the story started and ended with a focus on Paige and Preacher, I would say that 150-200 pages of a 370 page book was about people other than the MCs. And i didn't care about any of the other stories. By the end I didn't really care about Paige and Preacher anymore because I just wanted the book to end so I skimmed for the last 40 pages or so.
