Controlled Burn

This book went back to the west. Controlled Burn is action packed with mystery and romance. I've never read anything by this author before, but the book is well-written. If you love all this, Controlled Burn is the book for you.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advance Reader Copy from NetGalley of this book. This review is one hundred percent my opinion.

Controlled Burn by Lynda J. Cox is a story of love and dealing with the past to survive the future. A.J and Allison Adams live in Wyoming by way of Georgia and the Civil War. The past begins to catch up to them and Allison is injured in a fall that causes her to lose her memory of recent years, including her husband and two children, and her sight. Can they find the strength to fight their way back to each other and survive as a family?
I loved this book. Couldn’t put it down so I stayed up very late reading to the end. Every page had new excitement and struggles to meet. The love between the family that is now torn was palpable and I could feel the frustration of everyone coming off the page. The characters are so realistic I really feel I know them. I highly recommend this book to everyone who enjoys reading of struggle, triumph and overcoming all odds. I give it 5 of 5 stars. I will be looking for more by this author.
I received an advance copy of this book through Netgalley in exchange for my honest review.

This is the story of Allison who, due to an accident, is blind and has no memory of the last 10 years. Including her husband AJ and their two children. She is confused, scared and doesn't know what to feel or believe.
AJ, who loves Allison beyond measure, does all he can to help her remember their life together.
Amid dangerous threats from the past, AJ and Allison try to find their way back to each other.
I really enjoyed this story and will definitely recommend it. It was well written and enjoyable.
Thank you Lynda J. Cox, The Wild Rose Press, Inc. and NetGalley for allowing me to read an advance copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

For once I’ll start with a rant. When a book is part of a series, it would be better if it was said at least on the author's website, for the reader to know he/she has probably missed things by not reading the first volumes. And even more when the book is the sequel of another book. Because here I passed a lot of time wondering why some details of the lives of characters, main as secondary, were only mentioned, before I went to the author’s website and read all her books’ synopsis and discovered the facts. So here we have the sequel of the story for the main couple in Smolder on a Slow Burn, and we also meet the couples from West of Forgotten, Seize the Flame, and A Long Way from Yesterday.

Another drawback, nowhere it’s written when the story is meant to take place. It’s only after twenty pages or so that the hero’s past as a Confederate soldier is mentioned and I was finally able to situate the story in the time.

The story begins with the heroine, Allison, being kidnapped by the accomplice of a man who bears her husband a grudge because he put him in prison, and who has also kidnapped her children. During their rescue, Allison is hit on the head with a cattle brand. When she wakes up sometime later, she’s blind and she has forgotten the last ten years, and also her husband and her children. At this period there was no question of letting the amnesiac remember by herself, and the least that can be said is that at first she doesn’t take well to learn she’s married and a mother. Blindness doesn’t help like you can guess.

Allison is a strong heroine with a big heart, always ready to see the good in people but without letting people walking all over her. When she met the hero it seems she was teaching to children not allowed to go in the local school because of their ethnic or social background. She refuses to dwell at length on her blindness and her amnesia, trying to find ways to manage with the first, for instance by counting the steps from one room to another. The fact she feels a strong attraction for her husband and all the details about her that he knows allows her to quickly understand he doesn’t lie by pretending they are married.

A.J. is a kind man, deeply in love with his wife, who bears the physical and mental wounds of his past. He walks with a cane, he regularly has invalidating back pains, he’s covered with scars, and he has nightmares. He has a lot of patience and is very attentive to the heroine, to the point he goes and lives at the hotel for her not to feel like he’s pressuring her to accept him. At the same time he wants to protect her at any price from anything that could threaten her and he takes impulsive decisions for that, and she reproaches him for them later.

I liked the couple’s story, how she relearns her life and her love for her family, but you must disregard all these details that are only mentioned as they’re part of another book. What’s more, a lot of things (too many?) happen in this book: the kidnapping and the rescue at the very beginning, the heroine’s amnesia and blindness have a central place of course, but also the rescue operation of the prostitutes of the saloon by the hero’s brother, the threat on the couple by the saloon’s owner because they took in one the girls, and finally an almost fatal snowstorm!

What’s more sometimes the author’s style disturbed me but I wasn’t able to pinpoint why. All in all an average rating for me in spite of real qualities.

I enjoyed reading this book. It was exciting and kept me interested until I finished it. The characters were strong especially Allison who loses her sight and memory. Then you had her patient husband who saved the families lives and then had to rebuild a life with his wife. The book was one that l would recommend to be read.