Title: Indigo Lake
Author: Jodi Thomas
Series: Ransom Canyon #6
Not entirely bad but hardly satisfying
To my astonishment, the leftover sense of disappointment I had from the last installment in the Ransom Canyon series, Wild Horse Springs, tempted me to not only skip reviewing this one, but to skip reading it at all. But my curiosity, a small sense of duty, and years of loving Thomas’ work combined into a force I couldn’t deny, so I read it.
My overall impression: meh.
Oh, a quick word of advice—don’t read this book immediately after reading a dark, gritty thriller like Sandra Brown’s work. Give yourself some distance between the two, because, while both romances, they have vastly different tones. I read Seeing Red the day before I read this, and going from Brown’s unapologetic bluntness to Thomas’ fanciful purple prose is seriously jarring.
That said, it could be just the jarring change of tones, but at times this book seemed almost like it wanted to be poetry instead of a novel. I suppose it could just be a romance being a romance, but there was a lot of cheese, and characters said things I can’t imagine a person in real life saying without laughing. In those moments, it felt fake and cheap.
The book carried a sense of finality, as though it was the last full-length Ransom Canyon book. There’s a Ransom Canyon holiday novella due out in October, I believe, but the next project after that seems to be something new; I’m not sure if it’s a new series or a stand-alone novel. But I didn’t notice any mention of this being the “series finale” or “conclusion” in any marketing, so perhaps Thomas just needs to clean the palate with something different for a while. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
I think most of the sense of finality came from Lauren and Lucas getting their HEA at last and all the talk of the gypsy house that started it all. Their relationship, if it could be called that, began in the first book and remained up in the air throughout the series, until now, and it felt as if storylines were getting tied up in neat bows. Except there are still characters we don’t have closure on, like Tim O’Grady and Thatcher (from previous books). I could probably live without Tim’s HEA, I’m not attached to him. He wasn’t as annoying here as in Wild Horse Springs, but he still got on my nerves, just like he got on the sheriff’s. I liked Thatcher, though, and would be very interested to see where—and with whom—he ended up. Oh, and I’d totally be down for Maria Davis and Wes Whitman’s story. She’s blind and he’s so shy he hardly speaks (which reminds me of one of my favorite Thomas heroes, Carter McKoy from Texan’s Wager). They’d have an interesting journey.
In this installment, in addition to Lauren and Lucas, we saw newbies Blade Hamilton and Dakota Davis get together. We also saw some scenes from Dan Brigman’s point-of-view, and I’m not sure they were entirely necessary. But Blade and Dakota were entertaining and fully developed. I thought there’d be a little more to the feud between their families, but what there was served its purpose and made their getting-to-know-each-other hilarious. Although, did we ever find out why there weren’t any pictures of Hamilton women? If the explanation is there, I missed it.
As for Lauren and Lucas… *sigh* As a character, Lauren was a thorough disappointment, and I feel that their journey to love was a mess. Thomas kept putting it off and putting it off, and now… I don’t know what I was expecting, but it wasn’t this. I’m not satisfied at all. It doesn’t feel…earned. For twelve years Lauren’s mooned after Lucas, who pushed her so far away that they became strangers as adults. Lauren was never content, always feeling emotionally lost, never “finding herself,” never knowing what she wanted to do with her life, and somehow that became Lucas’ fault. She seemed to blame him for not loving her back, as if being with him was her only purpose for living. I have major problems with that. I believe people need to love themselves and be content in who they are as individuals before they can fully apply themselves to loving others, and never once did I feel Lauren liked herself at all. She was like an automaton going through the motions of life, doing what she thought she was supposed to do, not finding passion in anything except being moderately obsessed with Lucas and could-have-beens. She became a writer because she’d been told she was good at it, not because she loved doing it (or at least that’s the impression I got). Then Lucus shows up and finally seems resigned to being with her, and she acts as though that fixed everything, like she’s perfectly happy now because he’s finally paying attention to her. It was such horse doo-doo.
Speaking of doo-doo, I don’t mean to be at all disrespectful to the Apache language, but every time Dakota called her grandmother “Shichu,” all I heard in my head for the rest of the page was, “I shichu not.” You know, cause it sounds like “shit you.”
Anyway.
The suspense subplot was good, except one thing—the fires had nothing to do with the drug-running. They only started because one of the thugs was poking around where he shouldn’t have been and somehow his cigarette started the first fire. Then he started the other barn on purpose to make it look like…well, that they were started on purpose. And the man who died in the fire? Just a drifter who’d snuck into the barn for a dry place to sleep. Completely unrelated and useless. I was angry when I read those explanations, because they were incredibly cheap and lazy. Thomas couldn’t think of anything else? Anything relevant? It undermines the entire plot. “Oh, those things that seemed super important? Yeah, didn’t matter whatsoever.”
Overall, Blade and Dakota’s story was cute and fun, but Thomas seemed to just want Lauren and Lucas to be together already so she could be done with them.
Could this be read as a stand-alone? Not if you want Lauren and Lucas’ interactions to make any sense.
