Reviewed by Chris
TITLE: Wild as the West Texas Wind
SERIES: Love Across Time #3
AUTHOR: Jackie North
PUBLISHER: Blue Rain Press
LENGTH: 300 pages
RELEASE DATE: February 23, 2019
BLURB:
Soulmates across time. Two hearts that were meant to be together.
In present day, Zach takes a road trip to Trinidad to find information on a missing friend.
In 1892, Layton Blue, outlaw, longs for hearth and home even as he treasures his life of freedom.
A freak rainstorm washes Zach’s car into a ditch, sending him back to the year 1892. Searching for help, alone and on foot in the middle of the nowhere, he crosses paths with the famous Ketchum Gang. Now the gang’s prisoner, Zach’s fate is to be sold at a seedy auction for whores.
Layton is put in charge of making sure Zach does not escape, but as the chemistry between them grows, Layton finds himself wanting to help Zach.
Can Layton overcome years of being on the run? Can Zach accept help from an outlaw?
REVIEW:
After receiving an impossible letter from his best friend–dated 1892–after Laurie’s second disappearance, Zach does what any level headed person would do: he goes to the cops. And they do what any level-headed law enforcement division would do: place him on the top of the suspect list and drag him off to an interrogation room. Luckily for Zach a 100+ year old letter is not much evidence (for better or worse) of anything, and he is let go. He still has no clue where is best friend is, though, so he high-tails it to Trinidad, New Mexico–where the letter was sent from–in hopes of finding some answers. He isn’t exactly thrilled when the “answer” seems to be to pull him over a hundred years into the past and into the “loving” arms of a band of outlaws who plan to sell his lily-white ass as compensation for a poker game he interrupted. And Zach might now be in the right century to confront his best friend, but Laurie might as well be a million miles away, still, since it doesn’t look like the pyscho holding him hostage is ever going to let him go. Not without a hefty payout, at least. Even Layton, the soft-hearted outlaw who tries to befriend Zach, is not much help. Stuck in the wilds of the New Mexico Territory, Zach must somehow survive long enough to find his friend and hopefully some way back to the land of cellphones, cars, and proper grooming products.
Taking up shortly after the end of the second book in this series, Honey From the Lion, this story can pretty easily be read as a stand-alone. Though I will say that this one does somewhat spoil the ending of the second book, so if you are planning on reading Honey I would absolutely say read it before starting this Wild as the West Texas Wind (incidentally, book one, Heroes for Ghosts, which I will be reviewing later this week, is not connected to either of these so it can be read at any point). Honey also offers a nice primer on what to expect out this story, so I would also recommend it for that reason. And on top of all that it is just a really good book. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I also really liked this one, though I had a few issues with some of the content, so it didn’t quite hit the mark that book two set. The writing is still just as good though. I’ve been incredibly impressed by how easily Jackie North has made the mixing of the two times seem. The language that happens in present time, as well in the 1892 (where a majority of this story takes place), each feel realistic, yet when Zach is in the past he still talks like he normally does–though he sometimes has to modify his colloquialism to try and make sense. Which is something I appreciate. I always find it weird in time-travel stories where the person who goes back in time tries to affect the dialect or dialogue style of the historical characters right away, and it ends up feeling like a bad high-school play. Zach doesn’t become another person by simple virtue of traveling through time. He is a man from the 21st century trapped in the late 19th century and pretty damn pissed about it.
Which after you get into the story you will understand why. I was pretty damn well pissed on his behalf as well.
All I’ll say is: Fuck you, Tom Ketchum. I hope you get slowly digested by a sarlacc over the course of a thousand years…and feel every damn second of it.
Wow, that was actually rather cathartic. I should curse horrible fictional characters on a more regular basis.
I think overal this was a really good story. Though by the end, as you can tell, you really want Tom to suffer some horrible, unending rash, in incredibly awkward places. But that tension that is built from his looming assholishness makes for some good back-and-forth between Zach and Layton. Granted, your frustration with Layton mounts with every chapter, but the story did a good job of showing just why it is taking him so long to do the right thing.
My one real gripe here is that the sex stuff comes into play before Layton gets his shit together. It wasn’t enough to piss me off, or make me hate him, but…ugh, couldn’t the story have waited till after the two were not in this weird semi captor-captive relationship thing to get their sexy-times on? I get why they did it. There was some serious chemistry going on between them, but the story, I don’t think, would have suffered all that much from waiting till that whole dubious-consent area was gone completely. It might have required the readers to wait a bit longer, and as this is, it is a bit of a slow-burner, but I would have much preferred that over this consent-issue I now have.
It didn’t ruin the story, by any means, but it did make the story a bit less fun for me. Still, this was a really great story, and once you accept that you are going to want to hunt Tom down and feed him piece-by-piece to a rabid piranha, then you are in for one hell of a ride. I don’t know if Jackie North has any more of these stories planned, whether connected to these two or more stand-alone like the first one, but I’m all up for reading them if she does. I’ve had a lot of fun with this series and they are some high-tier time-travel stories for lovers of the sub-genre like me.
RATING: 
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