I never expected “Pale Moon Stalker” to be a western romance. Since westerns aren’t one of my favored genres, I left it towards the end of my TBR stack. Imagine my surprise when it was both a western AND a historical AND had a touch of the paranormal about it; yeah, kinda blew my mind. I even finished the book in one read and enjoyed it! Just goes to show, there’s always something new and different and it’s good to occasionally venture outside your normal reading habits.
Sky is a woman on a mission. She intends to kill the man who killed her husband, but she can’t do it herself. Her preacher husband knew her well and made her promise not to kill his murderer. Of course, Sky is also half Native American so she quickly finds a way to keep her promise…while still enacting her justice. She’ll find someone ELSE to kill FOR her. She selects none other than ‘the Limey’, as famous for his ability to hunt down outlaws as he is for his crisp British accent. But Sky never counted on developing feelings for this Limey, just as she never really counted on living past her justice.
Max is a bounty hunter extraordinaire. So how this native woman got the drop on him he’ll never know. She wants him to kill a man and it’s a man he wants to kill so there really shouldn’t be a problem. Except now Max must marry in order to maintain his inheritance in England and he doesn’t really have any prospects in mind. So he strikes a deal with Sky. They’ll marry, go to England, secure his inheritance, and return to kill Sky’s first husband’s murderer. But neither of them could guess just this ‘deal’ would change their lives.
As I said, westerns aren’t my cuppa tea, but this one did manage to maintain my interest and keep me reading til the end. The story crosses two continents, touches on a third, and has several ‘side stories’; yet they all manage to come together into one cohesive whole. Pretty tricky that. The lead characters were irritating at times, but not enough to make me stop reading. The feelings and reasoning behind their decisions and actions mostly made sense, and the heat level wasn’t bad either!
While I’m not going to become a fan of western romances (and I wish I could tell you why, but they just don’t feel ‘right’ to me), I’m also not sorry I read this engrossing story by Shirl Henke. For western romance fans, I’d suggest you check out not just “Pale Moon Stalker”, but Henke’s back list too. Her writing and story weaving is too good to pass up.
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