Title: Sunrise Crossing
Author: Jodi Thomas
Series: Ransom Canyon #4
A good, solid addition to the Ransom Canyon series
As far as I can tell, Jodi Thomas is one of the few authors making a go of the romances that tell the stories of not one couple at a time, but several couples living within the same town/county/area, and she does it well. The writing in Sunrise Crossing was excellent.
The main pair: Yancy Grey, a character we met way back at the beginning, finally gets his HEA. He grew up with next to nothing, ran away when he was fourteen, and was in prison by eighteen, but despite the stark existence he’d led, he’d remained a good person and became a decent man. Considerate and compassionate with simple tastes, he cares for old people as a day job and in the evenings he goes to the old house he inherited from his grandmother and practices his carpentry skills fixing it up, board by board. That’s exactly what he’s doing when he meets Tori Vilanie (Her last name drove me nuts; I couldn’t figure out if it was pronounced Vil-AY-nie or Villainy.) A famous artist, Tori’s hiding out after escaping her parents’ greedy clutches by staying in Parker Lacey’s country home. She likes to go for walks late in the evening and discovers Yancy’s cozy barn. When he catches her up in the loft, he’s not mad; rather, he invites her to help him work on a fireplace mantle, no questions asked. As they spend more time together, they fall in love.
I loved Yancy and Tori. They were adorable. I call them the main couple because in my estimation, they got fleshed out the best and had the most screen time.
The secondary pair: Parker Lacey runs a very successful art gallery in Dallas, and Tori is one of her artists. When she finds Tori having something of a breakdown, she helps the young woman slip away for some peace and quiet. After some time, Parker sneaks away to join her on “vacation.” With no one else to turn to, she asks the cowboy who sold her her country home to give her a ride. Clint Montgomery is not friendly, not sophisticated, not even all that polite, but he has a heart of gold, and quickly develops feelings for Parker. They become more involved and fall in love as well.
Parker’s character was drawn out pretty well. We weren’t told much about her past except that people in her family, including her parents, had died young, and therefore she expected to, as well, and that provided her motivation for pretty much everything she did. Clint, on the other hand, was still something of an enigma by the end. We learned what we needed to know to see why he was where he was and doing what he was doing and acting like he was acting, but I didn’t really relate to him and failed to care much about him. We only got to see things from his perspective a couple of times, which betrays his position in the character hierarchy (aka the bottom). Honestly, I think he was just there as a plot device for Parker. He didn’t have a whole lot to do besides fall in love with her.
The periphery pair: Fifth Weathers, the relatively new deputy, meets Madison O’Grady, a helicopter pilot, when they do some investigating together, searching the ground from the sky. He likes riling her, and she likes flustering him, so their antics were amusing. We visited them during scenes when Fifth was working out the clues and facts of the mystery. I don’t think they were all that necessary… Except for their jobs, I can’t think why they’d have been important to the plot at all. Their scenes could have been taken out without much consequence.
Lastly, Galen Stanley aka Gabe Santorno aka Dr. Gabriel Santorno aka Gabe Snow. (If he was called this last at some point, I didn’t catch it. Why they decided to use it on the back cover blurb instead of Gabe Santorno, I have no idea. It was shorter, I guess. He was primarily Gabe Santorno.) Lo and behold, Gabe is Yancy’s long-lost father. He had a Romeo-and-Juliet romance with Yancy’s mother when they were teenagers, but their families found out and the sh*t hit the fan. Gabe was beaten nearly to the death, so nearly that people thought he had in fact died. But he survived, got away, and lived a lonely, desolate life, not knowing he had a son and not daring to see his love again, afraid she’d hate him. Now more or less a bounty hunter, he ends up discovering his son when he finds Yancy with Tori, who Gabe had been tracking since her parents had declared her missing. He sees the love blossoming between the young couple and vows to preserve that bond, to give them the chance he and Yancy’s mother never had, no matter what it took.
I think Gabe was the best-written character in the book. At first I didn’t like him, not sure what his motivation was or what role he would play—and that was a good thing; I wasn’t supposed to know right away. The reader is privy to his revelations as he decides to be as good a father as he could be when he was thirty-two years late to the party. The transformation from lonely, heartless drifter to a selfless, loving human being was fascinating and heart-warming. By the end of the book, he was my favorite, and I was rooting for him. I hope he finds Yancy’s mother and finally, after over thirty years, gets his own HEA.
So with plot and characters out of the way, I have a few overall negatives to share. There was a point, about two-thirds in, that the story started to drag. I think it would have been safe to shave fifty or so pages off—maybe Fifth and Madison’s scenes? Really, they were completely unnecessary. Second, a good portion of the chapters had random subtitles. They drove me insane until I learned to ignore them. I have no idea what the point of them was, but if I had to guess, they were titles of paintings, probably Tori’s. They irritated me so much I wanted to take a black Sharpie and cross them out as I came upon them. Bah. Lastly—we didn’t get an update on Lauren and Lucas! We’ve followed their paths since the beginning of the series, and they’re the couple I care about most in all the books. I was so sad when I got to the end without even seeing their names mentioned in 378 pages. No, wait, Lauren was referenced once, but not by name. But I think they should be a focus in the next book (which may or may not be the last?) and I CANNOT WAIT!!
Overall a very good book, with an intriguing plot and likable characters.
