Customer Reviews

Innocent Hearts

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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Rad's Innocent Hearts is utterly charming! The romance simply sizzles off the pages as young Bostonian Kate Beecher becomes
totally enamored of Montana rancher Jessie Forbes. A magically romantic story with characters you fall in love with.
A fascinating journey toward finding a place in life and the love and acceptance Kate and Jessie have craved for so long.

Distinguished by wonderfully evocative descriptions of the Western landscape, Innocent Hearts is sure to strike a chord with readers who have struggled and won the freedom to embrace their own lives.

The ending to this story is one that truly leaves a smile on the reader's face. This one will go on my keeper shelf

Set in the American West  in the rugged Montana Territory, deep in the Rockies  in the mid-nineteenth century, INNOCENT HEARTS is a tale of two young women who fall passionately in love. We follow the story of Kate Beecher  an educated Bostonian who has come West with her parents  and Jessie Forbes  wrangler, rancher, businesswoman - as they come to recognize and explore the depth of their feelings for one another as friendship turns to passion. But when their love is tested by both natural disasters and societal expectations, will they have the strength to buck all convention and build a life together? And at what cost?

This story has all the hallmarks of a classic Radclyffe tale: strong women who live and love passionately and independently; moments of soul-twisting loneliness and despair; vividly sensual, erotic lovemaking scenes. In INNOCENT HEARTS, Radclyffe adds the historical element to the mix, making this a quite unconventional coming-out story as well. And unlike many storytellers who tell stories of this sort, Radclyffe never preaches to her readers and never trivializes the very real conflicts faced by characters.

Radclyffe  the author of SAFE HARBOR, LOVES MELODY LOST, and ABOVE ALL, HONOR as well as the forthcoming SHIELD OF JUSTICE  has hit the lesbian romance market with a vengeance in the past fifteen months. If youve never read her work and you love stories about sexy, romantic, strong women, hurry up and see what youve been missing: simply the best books in this class. Radclyffes stories will warm your heart and set your soul on fire.

Kate Beecher, a beautiful, intelligent, accomplished young woman from Boston's Society Circle, travels west with her parents towards a life with an uncertain future. Arriving at their new home, Kate meets Jessie Forbes, a woman rancher who somewhat "scandalizes" Kate by wearing pants, and carrying a gun!

Intrigued by Jessie, Kate wheedles an invitation to attend the festivities when all the ranchers arrive in town for the "annual round-up" where Jessie rescues Kate from almost being trampled in a stampede.

Spending more and more time around each other, Kate and Jessie soon begin experiencing "strange feelings" when together. When the entire town is besieged by a mysterious illness, Kate and Jessie's friendship is thrown into a whirlwind! Will they survive to acknowledge these feelings? Will these feelings turn into love? Will another who has feelings for Jessie interfere? Will a possible newfound love withstand age-old prejudices?

Come along as the writer takes you on a wondrous journey of the lives of these two incredible women as they face life in the "untamed" Montana territory. You will definitely find yourselves intrigued by both the beauty and dangers of the old west as you experience life as the settlers lived it! This is one journey NOT to be missed!

I've read all of Radclyffe's books and some of her other stories on her web site. I'm beginning to believe this woman can't write a bad book. This one takes you to the frontier days of Montana. Kate Beecher has moved west with her parents from Boston to start a new life. Kate and her father share a love of new experiences and places, while Mrs. Beecher responds to the world of a typical woman of her time. Her husband makes the decisions and she'll follow along. This is exactly the world that Kate wants to get away from. She's never felt completely comfortable in the society of Boston, but Montana feels like home and she embraces the new surroundings. Then she meets Jessie Forbes. Could anyone be more different than the women Kate knew in Boston? In a country that puts women in laces and corsets, here is a woman who wears pants, herds horses and wears a pistol on her hip. Kate and Jessie are immediately drawn to each other, though neither one understands the attraction at first. One of the nice things about Radclyffe's books is that her characters don't immediately fall in love and jump into bed. Relationships develop at a normal pace and face real problems. Though the relationship between the two women is accepted a little more quickly than would have probably really happened in the 1800s, it was the West, where anything was possible. Readers will enjoy this story of two women who, against great odds, find each other and then, against even greater odds, love each other.

The relationship between Kate and Jessie is wonderful. Radclyffe does a very good job with their meeting, developing friendship, and eventually love.
However, Jessie and Kate almost live in a vacuum. Although there are other characters, only Mae plays any kind of real role in the book. Everyone else seems to be written in just to take up space. Kate's parents don't even put up much of a fight when she tells them she wants to move in with Jessie. (Sure, they fight her, but suddenly she gets sick and they change their minds.)

As a love story, this book is tops. As a story overall, it needs beefed up.

If your girlfriend dumped you, or your old cat finally moved on to the next life, or you didn't get that IPod for Christmas, or all of the above like me, and you need a truly heartwarming story, look no further. Kate is a young lady from a nice family in Boston who moves to Montana in a covered wagon. She meets a local rancher, Jessie, and the two women move toward love in a manner that is very plausible for the period this story is set in. I loved it, maybe because I always wished we had some lesbian westerns.
Even if you don't like historical romances much, you might still be surprised by this one. Radclyffe creates a picture of life back in those days that makes a fascinating backdrop for a very tender falling in love. The characters are very well done, especially the mother and the father. Instead of being cutouts, they are real people who are convincing for that time.
Once Jessie enters the book, I was turning pages pretty fast and couldn't wait for her to undo Kate's corsets. The scenes between the two women are not overdone which would have been wrong in this kind of story. This is an oldfashioned romance that doesn't feel dated. Instead it's authentic and very touching. I highly recommend it.

Innocent Hearts is absolutely beautiful! The depiction of the two women and their differences made for an excellent story line. One a tough but soft cow-girl and one a young inexperience woman. I could not put it down. It would make a great movie!!!!

Radclyffe does it again with a wonderful story of innocent love in the wild west! Kate Beecher, a transplanted Bostonian, has only been in town a short while when she experiences her first "roundup", a week-long horse auction. While she's trying to capture the excitement and feeling of it all on film, she comes perilously close to being trampled by Jessie Forbes' herd.
After the initial fear wears off, Kate and Jessie form a tentative friendship, which slowly grows to something deeper.

Radclyffe is one of the best lesbian romance writers I've had the pleasure of reading. She continues to entertain with each new story she writes, and Innocent Hearts is at the top of my list of favorites!

I just recently discovered Radclyffe and this is the first novel of hers that I have finished. I absolutely loved it! It was extremely difficult to put it down when life interrupted my reading time. The tender, timeless first-time love between two women was expertly crafted and I caught myself holding my breath at more than one twist or turn in the book. I look forward to reading many more of Radclyffe's novels. I truly did not want this western to end and even though I just finished it an hour ago, I already miss Jessie and Kate and their romance.

I loved it. This is my first Radclyffe and I can see why she's so popular. To me the queen of lesbian western love stories is Vada Foster & B. L. Miller's "Josie & Rebecca: The Western Chronicles" and I started out comparing this one to that. There are a number of similarities in the two. But, as the story continued I started to view it from another angle.
Besides being a delightful and sexy love story it is, as the title hints a very "innocent" love story. Both girls have no inkling of their sexuality until they meet and fall in love with each other and even then they're pretty slow at realizing their true feelings.
This factor gives the story an innocent ring to it and also a purity that is unusual for a book that has such sexy scenes. I would vote it as the book I would most like my gay-friendly hetro friends to read. It's a great book for lesbians and hetros alike. I look forward to reading the sequel and some of Radclyffe's other books.