Book Review: Enduring Light

Enduring Light by Carla Kelly is a sequel to Borrowed Light. It picks up pretty much where the last one left off, but to be honest, it had been quite a few months since I'd read Borrowed Light and I had forgotten a lot of details. Since those details were pretty pertinent to the plot in Enduring Light, I would definitely recommend that you read Borrowed Light before this one.

So, here's a bit of background. Julia Darling had taken a position as a cook for a rancher in Wyoming named Paul Otto. The author did an incredible job with their love story in Borrowed Light and I really enjoyed them. In Enduring Light, the love story continues with their engagement, wedding, and settling down into married life on a ranch. In this book, Julia is still figuring out how to deal with the scars from the fire (that happened in Borrowed Light) and Paul is trying to gather his cattle that scattered, when a new threat comes to their family and causes all sorts of havoc. The author does the setting really well, especially the cow gather scenes and what ranching life is really like, but the thing I liked best is the quirkiness of the ranch family and how the author stays true to the characters we all came to know and love in Borrowed Light.

Overall, it was an enjoyable historical romance, however, there was a lot of sexual innuendo in this book that seemed unnecessary and was quite distracting after a while. I also felt like the tension from Borrowed Light seemed a bit lacking in Enduring Light. Not that married life is boring, but there just wasn't a lot to wonder about and the storyline angle with James that held the tension in the story didn't make sense unless you had read and remembered Borrowed Light, of which I sort of didn't. On a personal note, it probably wouldn't bother anyone else, but the hero, Paul Otto, called Julia "sport" after pretty much every sentence he spoke and it was starting to drive me insane. Nicknames are fine, but when you are doing it after every sentence, it's too much.

So, I'm a little Jekyll and Hyde on this one. I liked knowing more about how things turned out for the characters in Borrowed Light, but I thought Enduring Light needed a little more plot so it would seem less like a really long epilogue.

Here is the back copy for it:

Julia Darling is finally able to marry her Paul for eternity. But it’s a harsh world for a rancher in turn-of-the-century Wyoming, especially a Mormon rancher. When alienation and threats start coming, Julia must prove she’s her husband’s equal in strength and endurance as she learns to let go of scars on the outside and inside. Bestselling author Carla Kelly has woven a new story about the depths of love discovered by enduring to the end.