Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Trial by Fire
AUTHOR: B.A. Tortuga
PUBLISHER: Dreamspinner Press
LENGTH: 228 pages
RELEASE DATE: March 15, 2016
BLURB:
One Aussie. One Texan. One baby. One hell of a fight.
When his sister and her husband are killed in an accident, Aussie cattle station owner Lachlan McCoughney rushes to Texas to rescue their infant daughter, Chloe. He expects to find his niece living in squalor with the Sheffields, a rodeo family.
Instead, Lachlan finds Holden Sheffield, a salt-of-the-earth cowboy running a huge business operation. They want to explore their mutual attraction despite the many problems thrown their way, and together, they must find a way to give Chloe a new family and find a love that spans thousands of acres and two continents.
REVIEW:
Lachlan McCoughney has been looking for his sister since she ran off years ago. When he finally gets word of where she has gone, it also comes with the bad news that she had died, along with her husband, in an airplane accident. Devastated that he had found his sister only to lose her again, Lachlan is determined to go to the US and find his niece who was being cared for by his sister’s in-laws. But when he arrives he finds that Holden Sheffield–his sister’s brother-in-law–has full custody and has no intention of letting the little girl out of his sight, let alone go off to live in Australia with Lachlan. At an impasse, Lachlan plans on staying till he can change the man’s mind or find some way for him to keep the last bit of his sister in his life.
This is the first book I’ve read in Dreamspinner’s Dreamspun Desires collection. I mostly picked it up to read because I love reading everything Aussie. And, well, the blurb looked interesting even though I tend to steer away from books where parenting is the main theme of the story. I liked the blurb, though, so I’d thought I’d give it a chance.
One of the things I did really like about this book from the beginning was how well it set up the feel of the place and of the people. These characters have a unique was of speaking and it did a lot to make this book stand out. Granted, half the time I had no clue what they were saying (a bit of a distraction when trying to read) but I can’t deny that these people felt real and substantial.
I did however have a rough time with several aspects of the story.
For one, the climax happened at nearly the 2/3 mark and it really threw off the flow of the story for that last third. As much as I found these characters interesting, nearly 70 pages of custody arguments was not all that interesting to read. There is very little plot or character development going on during those last 70 pages and to be frank, it was kinda boring.
I also have some problem with how these characters felt a little forced when it came to their tough-man antics. It sometimes felt that they were constantly posturing, trying to prove how manly they were. How cowboy. How…alpha. It was, it is fair to say, not my favorite part of this story. I can get that some of this was just the characters being the characters, but at times it felt seriously over the top.
For example that whole first scene with Lachlan and Holden. Really? The dude is threatened with a shot gun, punched, and literally thrown out of the house. All while everyone congratulates Holden on being a massive fucking asshole to the guy who just found out his sister is dead. I get that the family is grieving, but no one seems to think it is odd or wrong to beat up the man. Not only do I find these kind of actions and assumption the last thing I’d want in someone who is now in charge of raising a child, but it felt like it was there just to prove how Texan everyone was. And that was were it lost me. It felt like the story was trying to push this ideal of manliness that really was just a bunch of dudes acting like assholes towards each other. I found it hard to connect to these characters whose main character trait is pretty much the essence of dude-bro (if minus the homophobic tendencies).
The emphases on family, on responsibility, did help even out some of this, but not enough for me to get overly invested in the story. And when I’m not invested there is little that the story can do to win me back. I think there are definitely good parts of this story, and that others clearly seem to have found them, but this book lost me so early in the game that I had a hard time finding a way back in. It is not a bad story, but I think it takes someone without my temperament to really enjoy it.
RATING: 
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