faeriemyst read and liked Misfit's review of Getting Lucky :

"

Tessa White lost everything on the trail to California and ended up walking the rest of the way (who fed her and helped her?). At the end of the trail in San Francisco (see map above, I thought the gold camps and Sutter's fort were the en...more

Tessa White lost everything on the trail to California and ended up walking the rest of the way (who fed her and helped her?). At the end of the trail in San Francisco (see map above, I thought the gold camps and Sutter's fort were the end of the trail but what do I know?), she manages to collapse right in front of the most handsome and available gambler in the city - Lucky Monroe (how good is that?). Lucky tries to send her home to Iowa but our stubborn independent miss is determined to work off her debts and convinces Lucky to let her cook for his gambling customers, certain they're dying for a home cooked meal.

Of course there's the evil evil brothel owner Harley Knox who wants Tessa to enhance his stable of imported French whores (awfully smart of him to know Gold was 'gonna' be discovered in 1848 and bring those women all the way from France just in the nick of time...), as well as Lucky's slutty girlfriend/barmaid Delilah who resents the growing attraction between the two. Original no? Not.

Ok, ok, so it is just a romance and I should be more forgiving on the details, but how hard is it to do a little fact checking or read up on your period before writing a book? Where was all that infamous San Francisco mud? Why did it seem like the gold fields were just outside of town when even now with cars and roads its a looooong day's drive to get there? In a town filled with tents and shanties how did Harley have a house with mahogany floors and a marble staircase? WTF was it with Lucky talking all the time about just buying a ticket home to Iowa for Tessa (Greyhound maybe?). She's just come off the trail - that would be the trail that takes all summer and you barely made it over the mountains before winter hit (remember the Donner Party?). It has to be late Fall/early Winter by the time the story begins so who is going to head back East on a wagon train that time of year? And they sell "tickets"? Is he going to send her back via ship to the East coast? No that won't work because there's still how to get her to Iowa. Basides I think most of the ships that came into the harbor had a hard time getting back out - all those sailors deserting for the gold fields.

Don't we expect cohesion and reality in our contemporary novels? Wouldn't you be rolling your eyes if a heroine in the 1980's whipped out a cell-phone and starting sending text messages? That is what I'm looking for in a book and not just wall-paper dressing with let's say for example "J" taking a knife she's got hidden under her mattress to chop off "R"'s hair instead of the pair of shears any well-bred young miss would have in her sewing basket. Let alone how she got all that covered in head to toe blood off of him with nary a basin of water in her room.

Sorry, I went OT with a small poke at another book/author. Back on topic - I found this book slow paced, predictable with not even enough sex or purple prose to make it fun. No pots of honey here. If you're looking for a quick easy read with a simple story in a wall-paper historical setting this might be the book for you. If you'd like some more realism and meat to your Gold Rush story I highly recommend Gwen Bristow's fabulous Calico Palace.
(less) "