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Pine Valley #2
The Lawman's Last Stand
The woman who called herself Gigi McCowan had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and it had nearly cost her her life. Now all that stood between her and the cold-blooded killers on her trail was one solitary man, a burned-out federal agent who believed in nothing and no one... She could never tell Shane Hightower the terrible secret that had forced her to live in the shadows. But she ached to share with him everything that was in her heart. And more and more, she dreamed of showing him that there could be life, and love, for the two of them - if they lived to see tomorrow...
256 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published June 1, 2000
12 people want to read
About the author
Vickie Taylor
41 books52 followersVickie Taylor wrote her first novel in 1997. Upon completion, she was too chicken to give the manuscript to anyone she knew to read, so she sent her baby off to a few contests to get some anonymous feedback instead. Little did she know how her life was about to change: a few months later, she had won all four of the Romance Writers of America chapter contests she’d entered, was a Golden Heart finalist and had sold the book to Silhouette Intimate Moments!
Since then, Vickie has written numerous romantic suspense novels for Silhouette Books and Berkley Sensation, garnering such recognition as the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence in Romantic Suspense, a four-and-a-half star “Top Pick” review in Romantic Times, and a coveted RWA Rita nomination for her work.
In 2006, Vickie continued her acclaimed paranormal series featuring Les Gargouillen (the Gargoyles) with FLESH AND STONE, the sequel to the smashing debut CARVED IN STONE. The third book in the series, LEGACY OF STONE, is now on bookstore shelves everywhere.
Vickie lives in a small town in north Texas dubbed “The Heart of Horse Country” where she rounds out her writing days raising horses, volunteering with the local Humane Society, and serving on a K-9 search and rescue team
Since then, Vickie has written numerous romantic suspense novels for Silhouette Books and Berkley Sensation, garnering such recognition as the Daphne du Maurier Award of Excellence in Romantic Suspense, a four-and-a-half star “Top Pick” review in Romantic Times, and a coveted RWA Rita nomination for her work.
In 2006, Vickie continued her acclaimed paranormal series featuring Les Gargouillen (the Gargoyles) with FLESH AND STONE, the sequel to the smashing debut CARVED IN STONE. The third book in the series, LEGACY OF STONE, is now on bookstore shelves everywhere.
Vickie lives in a small town in north Texas dubbed “The Heart of Horse Country” where she rounds out her writing days raising horses, volunteering with the local Humane Society, and serving on a K-9 search and rescue team
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 8, 2011
This was an okay book and kind of followed up on the characters we saw in Virgin Without Memory, interim Sheriff but actually DEA agent Shane who is kind of burned out and thinking of quitting the agency ever since in one of his operations, he got involved with an informant and she played him.
Gigi is the vet but she is really not Gigi, instead she is a woman on the run who has now been exposed and finds herself in a ditch and with Shane, who she knows is a cop and has been trying to avoid despite their chemistry. When the next day she is trying to run, Shane catches her and then an attempt on her life has them going on the run together.
Shane doesn't know who Gigi is but he suspects she is involved in something bad and she refuses to tell him much expect that she witnessed a murder and ran from New York, so somehow he convinces her not to give him the ditch and help her.
But of course Shane has major trust issues, having never know what a family really is and his last experience with a woman and when some facts come out acts as a major jerk to Gigi. I never really felt he suffered for it or tried to make up for it much and I never felt the connection between these two, so all in all an average read.
Gigi is the vet but she is really not Gigi, instead she is a woman on the run who has now been exposed and finds herself in a ditch and with Shane, who she knows is a cop and has been trying to avoid despite their chemistry. When the next day she is trying to run, Shane catches her and then an attempt on her life has them going on the run together.
Shane doesn't know who Gigi is but he suspects she is involved in something bad and she refuses to tell him much expect that she witnessed a murder and ran from New York, so somehow he convinces her not to give him the ditch and help her.
But of course Shane has major trust issues, having never know what a family really is and his last experience with a woman and when some facts come out acts as a major jerk to Gigi. I never really felt he suffered for it or tried to make up for it much and I never felt the connection between these two, so all in all an average read.
January 17, 2018
The Lawman's Last Stand by Vickie Taylor is a wonderful romantic suspense. Ms. Taylor has delivered a well-written book with fabulous characters. Gigi and Shane's story if packed with action, suspense, humor and spicey bits. I totally enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more from Vickie Taylor in the future. This is a complete book, not a cliff-hanger.
I read a print copy of this book.
I read a print copy of this book.
September 4, 2015
It all starts when small town vet Gigi McCowan’s car is run off the road late one night. World weary DEA Shane Hightower is first on the scene. No matter how he tries to help her, Gigi is acting nervous and when she tries to flee town, Shane knows there is more to Gigi McCowan than meets the eye. She is running from something, and he wants to find out what.
Alrighty then. This book is so far removed from my usual wheelhouse that I have no real basis for comparison. I know I’m not the target audience and a lot of the things that grated me about this book probably don’t matter to the people who are, but it’s still something I have trouble wrapping my head around. Reading this was certainly an experience.
The writing in this book is strange. There is a certain dream-like quality to it, like nothing exists outside of the main duo, and any and everything else only comes into existence when a source of drama is needed. The rest of the world seems to politely wait until the couple have completed their set piece before anything else happens. Not once are they interrupted in the middle of something. At one point they have time to play a round of Marco Polo without so much as another person stopping to look at them. On top of this, the pacing of their relationship was highly bizarre. Shane and Gigi were always running hot and cold. When things started heating up, they’d always find some excuse to start fighting, even when that excuse doesn’t make a lick of sense.
The story started off interesting, but as things progressed it became painfully obvious that the author wanted a cop and a bad girl pairing without actually sullying the heroine. She went from capable fugitive in the opening chapters to whiny marshmallow who has no idea what she’s doing. The reasons the bad guy are after her keep getting pared down until it is simply because of something that she’d probably never have noticed and had actually forgotten about until right after the bad guys brought it up. Certainly not worth the hassle and high profile (attempted) murders they seem willing to go through to silence her.
It was very hard to get a bead on what the bad guys were actually trying to do. They seemed to be highly organised, capable of tracking the couple to Phoenix, down to the man, when neither of them had prior plans to go there and none of them did a thing that would attract attention in that short time, and yet, at the same time, they were utterly incompetent about it. They can infiltrate a highly secure facility, take out every single other person on site without killing them (or so Shane says), deliver a bomb, and still fail to notice when the people they are trying to kill aren’t even in the building. That takes a special level of incompetence. The sudden reveal at the end simply left me with two questions: “Who’s this guy?” and “Why is he telling them this?!”.
I guess at the end of the day, neither the plot nor characters are what matters here. It is about the daring romance and fiery sex. I guess it’s there, but to be honest, the first actual sex scene in this book has got to be one of the most awkward love scenes I have ever read. Things start getting steamy, with some questionable word choices and cringe-worthy descriptions, only to break away to exposition about something or another that doesn’t fit the mood at all. Not to mention that it seemed to be over within a few seconds, followed by a fade to black emphasising how much hot passionate sex they’ll be having off-screen. The one after that wasn’t much better. In and out and thinking about babies. Maybe I just don’t get this.
I don’t know what makes a good romance novel, maybe they’re all like this, maybe not. Maybe this hits all the marks for the pairing and I just don’t see it. This book was readable, even if it had me wanting to scream at the characters several times. I could even buy Shane and Gigi as a couple, so it can’t be too bad.
Storywise, it’s passable. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and at least tries to tie up the plot along the way. Could have been better, could have been worse.
An alright story of a DEA agent and a girl on the run.
I read this as part of my 2015 book challenge. Thanks to this challenge, I’ve wound up reading several books I might not have otherwise come close to. This is one of them. When I asked my largely non-reading mother what kind of books she has read, it was either a romance novel or a medical textbook. I elected to dive into the exciting world of pulp fiction, and in that spirit, I went with the lusty lawman. Because reasons.
***Reading Challenge 2015: A book your mother loves***
Alrighty then. This book is so far removed from my usual wheelhouse that I have no real basis for comparison. I know I’m not the target audience and a lot of the things that grated me about this book probably don’t matter to the people who are, but it’s still something I have trouble wrapping my head around. Reading this was certainly an experience.
The writing in this book is strange. There is a certain dream-like quality to it, like nothing exists outside of the main duo, and any and everything else only comes into existence when a source of drama is needed. The rest of the world seems to politely wait until the couple have completed their set piece before anything else happens. Not once are they interrupted in the middle of something. At one point they have time to play a round of Marco Polo without so much as another person stopping to look at them. On top of this, the pacing of their relationship was highly bizarre. Shane and Gigi were always running hot and cold. When things started heating up, they’d always find some excuse to start fighting, even when that excuse doesn’t make a lick of sense.
The story started off interesting, but as things progressed it became painfully obvious that the author wanted a cop and a bad girl pairing without actually sullying the heroine. She went from capable fugitive in the opening chapters to whiny marshmallow who has no idea what she’s doing. The reasons the bad guy are after her keep getting pared down until it is simply because of something that she’d probably never have noticed and had actually forgotten about until right after the bad guys brought it up. Certainly not worth the hassle and high profile (attempted) murders they seem willing to go through to silence her.
It was very hard to get a bead on what the bad guys were actually trying to do. They seemed to be highly organised, capable of tracking the couple to Phoenix, down to the man, when neither of them had prior plans to go there and none of them did a thing that would attract attention in that short time, and yet, at the same time, they were utterly incompetent about it. They can infiltrate a highly secure facility, take out every single other person on site without killing them (or so Shane says), deliver a bomb, and still fail to notice when the people they are trying to kill aren’t even in the building. That takes a special level of incompetence. The sudden reveal at the end simply left me with two questions: “Who’s this guy?” and “Why is he telling them this?!”.
I guess at the end of the day, neither the plot nor characters are what matters here. It is about the daring romance and fiery sex. I guess it’s there, but to be honest, the first actual sex scene in this book has got to be one of the most awkward love scenes I have ever read. Things start getting steamy, with some questionable word choices and cringe-worthy descriptions, only to break away to exposition about something or another that doesn’t fit the mood at all. Not to mention that it seemed to be over within a few seconds, followed by a fade to black emphasising how much hot passionate sex they’ll be having off-screen. The one after that wasn’t much better. In and out and thinking about babies. Maybe I just don’t get this.
I don’t know what makes a good romance novel, maybe they’re all like this, maybe not. Maybe this hits all the marks for the pairing and I just don’t see it. This book was readable, even if it had me wanting to scream at the characters several times. I could even buy Shane and Gigi as a couple, so it can’t be too bad.
Storywise, it’s passable. It has a beginning, a middle and an end, and at least tries to tie up the plot along the way. Could have been better, could have been worse.
An alright story of a DEA agent and a girl on the run.
I read this as part of my 2015 book challenge. Thanks to this challenge, I’ve wound up reading several books I might not have otherwise come close to. This is one of them. When I asked my largely non-reading mother what kind of books she has read, it was either a romance novel or a medical textbook. I elected to dive into the exciting world of pulp fiction, and in that spirit, I went with the lusty lawman. Because reasons.
***Reading Challenge 2015: A book your mother loves***
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews