A River to Cross- a disappointment

A River to Cross by Yvonne Harris was a disappointment to me.  I love Christian historical romances, but this one fell flat.

The romance part was too modern.  While nothing immoral happens between Jake and Elizabeth, there is none of the old-fashioned propriety one expects in a love story set in the 1880's.  She even sleeps at his house unchaperoned.  Though this would not seem strange today, it seemed very out of place for the setting.

The romance was also to sappy.  The book made is seem as though everyone falls in love at first sight.  Elizabeth's first husband proposed in only a few days.  Jake proposed to a former fiance on the day he met her.  The two in the story seem "know" as soon as they look into each other's eyes, but at least wait some weeks to get engaged.  It seemed like the relationships were built solely on physical attraction. 

The story opens by introducing Elizabeth as a woman who has come to Texas to help care for her niece when the child's mother passed away.  Yet though the child is later orphaned she is barely mentioned throughout the rest of the story.  So why have the kid in the story at all?  Why not just say Elizabeth went to Texas to visit her brother?  It seemed like the whole niece/aunt angle was woefully underdeveloped.

The plot did not flow to me at all.  It seems like a whole section of the story (involving a beaver dam) served no purpose except to allow the couple to have another life threatening experience together.  The rest of the story seemed fairly disjointed as well.

Though I usually enjoy the books I am given to review by Bethany House, I can only give this book 2 stars.