I liked figuring out the history between the two main characters. Sometimes, the cotton mill details would get a little too descriptive to the point it became information overload, but nonetheless a nicely written book.

Lynsey Carter returns to Mindalby to find out what is going on with the family business and her family. While back in this small outback town, she encounters her sweetheart from high school who stayed in town. Can they find a future while she is finding answers. Small town, Outback and romance all bring together a good tale. Enjoyed this part of the series.

Ebook from Netgalley and publishers with thanks. Opinions are entirely my own.

I am enjoying this series and the township of Mindalby, the struggle the town’s folk are going through since the closure of the Cotton Mill and the way they are all coping, this time we meet Lynsey Carter and the hurt that she goes through seeing as it is her father and step mother that were in control of the mill when everything went pear-shaped, and how she copes with meeting up with her first love Julian Stone who now runs a fuel depot in town.

Linsey moved away nearly ten years before, to study and to escape the hurt of the break-up with her first love Julian, she is now an agriculture scientist and living in Brisbane, but has come home to be with her mother when things are getting harder in the town, and to try and talk to her father the man that she was never close to. Paperwork is uncovered that forms a cloud over her father and their family and she is drawn back to Julian and when danger is lurking, her and Julian cannot fight the emotions that bring them back together that neither had really gotten over.

Julian has worked very hard to get to where he is today but with the mill closing even though he is not a farmer it still impacts on his business and when his first love arrives back in town and is in grave danger Julian is there to help but the course of true love never runs smoothly, but he is glad when a few truths come out about their break-up.

This is a fast paced emotional story that kept me turning the pages as more is uncovered about what happened at the mill and lives are threatened, I really loved Julian and his strength to get ahead in the town and Linsey standing so strong with everything that is happening but the journey to a HEA for both of them is just so good, an emotional roller coaster that left me smiling, I look forward to the next one in this series.

A daughter's choice by Lee Christine.

Mindalby, a small town, a community, a home. But when the mill that supports the local cotton farmers and employs many of the town's residents closes unexpectedly, old tensions are exposed and new rifts develop. Everyone is affected and some react better than others, but one thing is certain: living on the edge of the outback means they have to survive together, or let their town die.

Lynsey Carter's relationship with her father is fraught, so when she hears that the cotton mill that is her birthright has closed down (and her father is lying low), she returns to Mindalby to support her mother and seek out answers. She hasn't been back since high school, since she left her heart behind with Julian Stone.

But Julian didn't want it, or her; he wanted a life in Mindalby. Torn between family loyalty and duty to the community, between the life she's built for herself and the passion for Julian she just can't seem to shake, Lynsey needs to decide if her home–coming is for a visit – or for real.

This was a fantastic read with brilliant characters.  I loved how Julian and Lynsey were together.  A brilliant read. Just couldn't put it down.  5*.

Fourth in the Mindalby Outback Romance series about the residents of a small outback town thrown into turmoil when the local cotton mill closes down unexpectedly, this book’s heroine is Lynsey Carter, the daughter of the mill owner, who moved to Brisbane to pursue a career in agricultural science. At her mother’s behest, she’s come home to try and help sort out the crisis.

Lynsey’s mother and father divorced long ago and her mother was replaced with a younger model, who’s referenced multiple times but doesn’t appear in this book. Lynsey doesn’t have a good relationship with her father who basically encouraged her to get out of town early, including blackmailing the man she was in love with to dump her. Now she’s back and Julian Stone is still there, having built a successful fuel haulage business from the ground up, and the chemistry between them is as strong as it’s always been.

There is so much realism in the small town of Mindalby, a town utterly dependent on the continued prosperity of one major employer, and all the authors in this series have done a great job of portraying the bleak outlook if the mill stays open and the flow-on effects to everyone in the community. Mindalby feels very real, as do its characters, and I found myself feeling a great deal of sympathy for Lynsey’s position when she is faced with the unpalatable truth about her father and the fraud he’s been committing for years. She has to make a choice; whether to hand over the proof she’s unexpectedly presented with to the auditors and the police, or destroy it and stay quiet. Either way, the legacy her grandfather built will be gone and the Carter name mud in Mindalby, but there’s only one path she can see which might lead to her being able to live with her own conscience.

The book raises some interesting moral questions - what would you do if a relative turned out to be acting criminally? Just how much criminality could you tolerate? Where do you draw the line, and why… do you draw it when it starts costing other people, or will you tolerate it as long as it doesn’t affect you personally?

There is a side plot with a genuine villain where Lynsey is put in danger through Julian’s actions, something he realises when he’s feeling particularly righteous and which flips his whole perspective on its head. At first I thought it was a bit of a red herring, but when the reveal came I realised it was actually an essential part of his character development. Up until that point he’d been feeling a bit smug and righteous and I liked him a lot better once he understood that sometimes, bad things happen even when you’re trying to do the right thing.

Lynsey and Julian had great chemistry, though I was a bit disappointed in the way Julian’s current romantic interest just conveniently disappeared without so much as a whimper when Lynsey arrived on the scene. That was outweighed, for me, by how realistic both characters and story felt and how well it tied in with the rest of the series. Five stars for yet another fantastic read in this wonderful Australian series.

Lynsey Carter was pleased to see her cousin Willow arrive to take her home to Mindalby, a place she hadn’t returned to often over the past nine years. Her job was in Brisbane and she was proud of her success. She just wished she didn’t have to return to Mindalby under these circumstances. Her father owned the Mindalby Cotton Mill which had recently gone into liquidation and the townsfolk were becoming edgy and upset. Many had lost their jobs – no income meant no food on the table, or rent being paid. It wasn’t a good situation to return to.

Lynsey’s mother and father had divorced fifteen years prior, so Lynsey’s relationship with her father was tense. But support her mother she would. She also hoped not to run into Julian Stone, the boyfriend she’d left behind when she fled to Brisbane all those years prior.

But there was an element of danger in the town – and it was directed at the Carter’s. And there was only so much the local police could do…

A Daughter’s Choice is the 4th in the Mindalby Outback Romance series, all written by different authors. Gripping tension, plenty of action and a fast pace made this a quick, easy read which I thoroughly enjoyed. A Daughter’s Choice has the right blend of suspense and light romance to be called romantic suspense – one of my favourite genres. I’ve loved this author’s previous work, and this one doesn’t disappoint. Highly recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read and review.

I enjoyed this chapter in the Mindalby series, it was good to see an outcome to the cotton mill problem that has such an impact in the town. I liked the Lynsey and Julian reunion and the issues that they needed to deal with. I've read other reviews saying it all happened too easily or not enough was sorted, but I was happy with the way things went down between them.

Thanks to NetGalley and Escape Publishing for a copy in return for an honest review.

Lynsey is called home from Brisbane by her Mum; her absentee father off the radar-responsible for the closing of the small towns biggest company and no money in sight. Workers are boycotting, there is no information forthcoming. Lynsey is an agricultural scientist, working on a new strain of disease resistant cotton which plays into the plot later on in the book. Her parents divorced some 11 years ago, her mother has owned her own business in town but still getting a little flack from some of the townspeople. Coming home to help her Mum, she's also faced down with the boy, now man who broke her heart when she left 10 years ago for school. She comes back once a year and doesn't see him. He now owns his own business and is very successful. Julian is a great character in the story, I liked him along with his friend Chappy. With the closure of the mill Chappy is out of work as well and Julian hires him on, after firing a driver who's had one too many violations. The mill closing also effects Julians business because he'd worked out a deal to build an ethanol conversion station closely and building has already started on it and his note is due soon. Pulling the builders off the job, he's able to work with the bank. This after he's talked to Lynsey and she discovers what her father has been hiding all these years. He's never given her a bit of attention, responsible for sending Julian packing when they were younger although Julian never told Lyns. In between all this mess, Lynsey now has someone who is threatening her life, or so it seems after she and Julian are run off the road one night. Police are called in and the town's small police force of 3 men are taxed to the limit however they are determined to protect Lynsey and her Mum.
It's a twisted woven plot line with a lot going on and multiple characters who are of interest in the story. This book is part of a series and I wouldn't mind going back and reading the books that start the series. Set against the Outback which is a favorite setting for me, good storyline and easy flow. Romance, mystery, this book has it all.
3.5 stars

*arc from NetGalley and Escape Publishing for an honest review. All thoughts are my own.*

A Daughter's Choice is book four of the Mindalby Outback Romance series and written by Lee Christine. While I enjoyed the concept of this story, I did find it dragged on and that issues from the past between the primary couple were not resolved before they once again became intimately involved. This for me, felt a little shallow. So not necessarily my favourite book of the series to date, but still an acceptable read.

Loved it good read enjoyable would recommend reading it and the author amend other books in series won’t disappoint

I’ve always like Lee Christine’s writing and ‘A Daughter’s Choice’ is no different. The context and the circumstances in which this story are unusual to say the least, though distilled, it’s one of a girl returning home to the Australian Outback to take care of affairs that have gone awry (thanks to a corrupt, deadbeat father), then meeting an old flame who’d broke her heart. With a narrative built around the failure of a mill on which the livelihood of a small community depends, Lynsey and Julian reunite out of necessity—returning home does that in a small town—and it takes only just a few days together to remind them how good they could be and have been.

But more on that later.

Pacing-wise, I thought the story did drag on a bit when it became slower going than I expected (Christine is an author I read for romantic suspense after all) and the slower pace did throw me off a bit. That translated to me put this down and taking it up numerous times, and when I took it up, there were parts I trudged through just trying to stay interested in the subject matter.

Apart from following the developments and the slight suspense written into this (which perked me up), I was baffled how Lynsey and Julian fell into bed when nothing between them was resolved, all within a few days after a separation of 9 years. Julian’s supposed friends-with-benefits situation with another woman seemed to become a non-issue when I’d actually hoped for that particular casual relationship to be dissolved even before Lynsey/Julian got together again. Admittedly, second-chance romances don’t necessarily sit all too well with me when the slightest thing give me cause to question the validity of the reunion. Essentially, I thought there were relationship issues which needed ironing out but felt glossed over in favour of the suspense despite both protagonists trying to be mature about themselves.

In all, the dive into the Australian Outback is always a cultural shift that I love to read about after all because such writers—and I’ve gone through quite a few of them—offer such different perspectives especially in the romance genre, I think I surprised myself most of all by not really feeling this story at all.