Customer Reviews

Reckless Love

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I love Elizabeth Lowell books, she is a great writer.

Reckless love had adventure, passion, and it kept me at the edge of my seat. I had a great time reading it and couldn't put it down. There was never a dull moment.

Janna Wayland lived her whole life with her father untill he dies and lives her all alone on the frontier. But Janna is a fighter, she has a wild love for where she lives, her herbs, and the wild mustangs she tames.

When she saves Ty MacKenzie's life she has a man wilder than any of the mustangs she's ever tamed. But she doesn't want to tame Ty, she wants him to love her as much as she loves him. She gives him all herself whole heartedly risks her heart to the man of her dreams.

After the Civil War, Ty proised himself that he would have his dream woman, a silken lady or nothing at all. So when he awakes to find himself in the care of a wild beauty, and he can't keep his hands of her, he fights the feelings he has for her.

But none of his self restraint can keep him from taking all that Janna gives to him however. He wants his freedom and doesn't want to be saddled with a wild waif. However, when he realizes that his dream had been stupid and that freedom would be nothing without Janna, he has to canvince her of that.

RECKLESS LOVE is a romantic novel that is full of adventure and so much passion that it sizzles! If you love horses, especially wild mustangs, it is the book for you. Elizabeth Lowell again shows readers the power of love and the wild live of the frontier.

It is a must read! Read and Enjoy!

I like most of Elizabeth Lowell [aka Ann Maxwell] books, and have trouble deciding if I like her historicals better than her contermporaries. This book, which ties to contemporaries "Fire and Rain", "Ganite Man", "Outlaw" and "Warrior" doesn't make a decision any easier. I really liked both characters, especially Janna's strenght. Contrary to what someone else said in a previous review, I find it quite logical that she recognizes her feelings for Ty as love pretty soon; after all, love usually starts as attraction and admiration, maybe infatuation even. She has seen Ty's courage and strenght in surviving Cascabel's torture, and then she has nursed him to heal his wounds. Of course it doesn't hurt that he is a hunk. As for his feelings, once again I disagree. I think that through most of the novel you can see how he is changing... He is the one who doesn't get it. In sum, I do love this book. Is another one of my many favorites by E. Lowell. Now what I would really like even more would be for her to write books with Ty's brothers and sister stories...

If you are wondering if you should get this book, you should definately get it! Lowell has once again written an awesome western romance! Jenna and Ty are so easy to fall in love with that you won't want the book to end! Jenna and Ty's struggles will surely keep you in suspense to see what happens next!

I bought this book many years ago and just recently brought it back out to read again (I keep every EL novel I buy.) Of course I couldn't put it down. The relationship between Janna and Ty is wrought with frustration, excitement, protectiveness, and love. Even though it takes Ty the length of the novel to come into the understanding that Janna is, and always will be, his only love, the reader is assured that his blindness will not go on indefinitely. The ending did seem to get wrapped up a little quickly, but no less satisfactorally for me than the ending of any other book EL has written. I just have two questions. Are there other books about Ty's brothers, and if not, when is Elizabeth Lowell going to put me out of my misery and write them?

Elizabeth Lowell has a wonderful gift of taking you into the adventure with her descritions of the Utah landscape, the excitement and terror of the terrain and the urgency of hiding from the renegade Indians. The love and the agony caused by the unrequited love Janna feels for Ty is very heartrending, you really get a sense of her loneliness and yearning for Ty's love to be returned. Dunce that he is , he almost leaves it too late to come to the realization that he really does love Janna. I would love to see the terrain in Utah that was Janna's world. This book will be a part of my permanent library.

This book is wonderful! I have been competatively training andriding horse for 15 years, I found this book well researched andrealistic in the handling and techno lingo of the horses. EL's bookare so gripping. I've read everything of hers I can get my hands on! I just want to know that there are more books out there about Ty's brother's and his sister! And this may sound dillusional, but I want to know how Janna handles civilization. She has a culture shock if there ever was one! I suggest if you liked this read Summer Games!

Orphaned when she was just 14, Janna Wayland has spent the last five years of her life living alone in the wilds of Utah Territory, with only the wild mustang horses for company. That solitude is shattered, though, the day she watches Tyrell MacKenzie escape from a band of Indian renegades. Coming to his rescue, she secrets him away to safety, heals his body...and falls in love with him. But Ty, having lost everything in the Civil War, dreams of rebuilding his fortune and sharing it with the perfect "silken lady" of his imaginings. In Janna, he finds a woman who matches him in intelligence, courage, and strength, but is he too blind and fixated on a dream to appreciate the real woman he holds in his arms?

Reckless Love struck me as being quintessential Elizabeth Lowell, and in a very real way, Lowell represented the best of historical romances from the 80s and 90s. She has a style that is uniquely and unmistakeably her own, and there is a consistency of structure, voice, and characterization to her novels that is certainly evident here as well.

Lowell's heroes are masculine and courageous, with a deeply-ingrained sense of honor. But they are also obtuse and hard-edged. You can almost always count on a Lowell hero to have a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, and some of the things he says to the heroine may have a 21st century reader cringing -- especially one who is reading this novel for the first time. I don't recall that the hero's diarrhea of the mouth was much of an issue for me when I was younger, but now that I'm an older and more experienced woman, I find I have FAR less tolerance for this boorish behavior.

Lowell's heroines, on the other hand, have aged better for me. Yes, they are very young. No one does the shy but naturally sensual and seductive virgin quite as well as Elizabeth Lowell. I also feel that they put up with far too much emotional and verbal abuse from the heroes, especially during the first half of the story. But I still can't classify them as that most hated of romance constructs: the Too Stupid To Live heroine. In their own way, Lowell's heroines are scrappy and independent characters who work hard and face their fears, and I think it's those qualities which eventually get through to the hero and effect the typical Lowell-style redemption and resolution...after a bit of much-deserved grovelling by the hero, of course!

Despite the predictability of Lowell's formula, though...and despite my cringing every time the hero repeats one of those silly nicknames he uses for the heroine ("satin butterfly", in this story)...I can't help but enjoy her old novels. She tells a good story, and she writes a good story. She doles out bits and pieces of characterization or background in such a way that keeps you turning the pages because you just have to learn MORE. She doesn't get ahead of herself or rush the delivery, and when it comes to the sex scenes, she takes her own sweet time and delivers the goods with hardly a "dirty word" to be found. Physical attraction is always the initial spark between Lowell's characters, but by the time the novel is finished, the reader can't help but feel that the characters really know one another and that their love for each other goes beyond the phsyical and superficial. She gives you a happy ever after you can believe in, and pehaps that's what makes Lowell's novels so satisfying to me, even nearly 20 years after publication.

One note about this book: This is considered the first book in Lowell's Mackenzie-Blackthorn series, but I believe this is the only historical novel in that series. The others are contemporaries.

"Fire and Rain", "Outlaw", "Granite Man", and "Warrior" (with "Reckless Love" as the historical prequel) come together to create an outstanding series of books by Elizabeth Lowell. These 5 books document the lives and loves of the Mackenzie/Blackthorne family (a family tree at the beginning of the books help to show the relationships). I first read these books out of order (unintentionally, of course). It was as I was reading book #3 that I recognized the names from book #1 and things started clicking into place. I then made it a point to get all the other books and now it has become a summer ritual to read them in order, starting with "Reckless Love" (see the first sentence of my review for the correct order of the contemporary novels). The characters in this series are just yummy! I cannot get enough of them! Lowell's signature plot twist always involves an explosive misunderstanding of some sort between the main characters and she masterfully creates 5 unique situations that have you wanting to smack someone for their emotional "blindness"! She always manages, however, to weave a poignant reconciliation that has, at times, brought tears to my eyes. I love the way she keeps reintroducing previous characters (even from the historical prequel) from earlier books, too. It's like getting a bonus epilogue in every story. Lowell is a master, and although this series has some books that are better than others ("Outlaw" is my favorite, while "Granite Man" is my least favorite), it's well worth your time and effort to add all 5 books to your library. It's unfortunate that Lowell stopped this series one book too early. Another brother, Utah, is mentioned in the last book, but no book has ever been written about him. In an online interview with Lowell, I read that she had some kind of falling out with the publisher that prevented her from being able to share his story. It's a pity, too - I would have loved to read it! Happy reading!

If there were 1000 stars, I will still rate this book 1000 stars instead of 5 stars. This book is a tear jerker and still it shows us that love can beat anything beautiful.

It also shows us that when given freedom, we still will choose love.

Keep it up!

What a beautiful, exciting love story... and extraordinarily unique too!

Little Janna has been abandoned near the Black Plateau on the frontier since her father died when she was just fourteen. She learned to fend for herself, dress as a boy, and live successfully, avoiding the deadly renegade Indian tribes (and wild, woman-hungry frontiersmen) that roam the area. She befriends a team of wild horses, led by a beautiful stallion named Lucifer and spends her days like a feral jungle child.

Until she rescues Ty from the bloodthirsty Indians and nurses him back to health. Ty is a good man, a soldier with emotional wounds form the civil war, and is thankful for her rescue. Of course, he thinks she's a boy at first...

This novel circles around the idea that Ty wants Lucifer (the stallion) in order to breed a horse farm in Wyoming- and the wealth that this would bring him in order to afford "a silken lady" and then a family to follow. Ty dreams of delicate women in lace as a vision that will somehow fix the horrors he suffered in the war. He, of course, didn't count on being thrust in the path of a wild, feral, woman-child who dresses in scrubs and tames wild horses. Janna is anything but delicate, but she is fierce and fun and sensual- and Ty finds himself falling for her head over hooves.

Ty needs Janna's help to capture Lucifer... but he doesn't realize that he needs a whole lot more help than that! Janna heals those around her in many ways. I think you'll enjoy this adventurous and sensual romance- and the headstrong Janna as she tames the equally headstrong Ty (who may be more stubborn than the stallion).

If there are any complaints- you WILL roll your eyes the 400th time you read the word "silk".. (silken butterfly, silken ladies, silken skin, silk silk silk silk....) and you might lost track of the details in some long, complex passages about the land and the horses in general. But definitely a well-written and beautiful love story!