Amanda Cabot’s A Borrowed Dream

Catherine Whitfield is sure that she will never again be able to trust anyone in the medical profession after the town doctor’s excessive bleeding treatments killed her mother. Despite her loneliness and her broken heart, she carries bravely on as Cimarron Creek’s dutiful schoolteacher, resigned to a life without love or family, a life where dreams rarely come true.

Austin Goddard is a newcomer to Cimarron Creek. Posing as a rancher, he fled to Texas to protect his daughter from a dangerous criminal. He’s managed to keep his past as a surgeon a secret. But when Catherine Whitfield captures his heart, he wonders how long he will be able to keep up the charade.

With a deft hand, Amanda Cabot teases out the strands of love, deception, and redemption in this charming tale of dreams deferred and hopes becoming reality.

Review

I read the first book in this series and really enjoyed it. Amanda Cabot is a very good writer. My thoughts:

What I liked:

The writing. The story is not complicated and yet the writing completely pulled me in. I understood Catherine and Austin. Their motivations and fears became important to me as a reader.

Catherine. We are introduced to Catherine in the first book and I was very much looking forward to being in her head. I wasn’t disappointed. Catherine has some issues in the past that she must confront in this book and she does it in such a way that she doesn’t diminish as a character.

The suspense premise. Austin has such an interesting past. I had never heard or read of any person with a background like his.

The secondary characters. Of course we come in contact with characters from the first book, but then there are some children who come in completely steal the show.

Spiritually, the novel deals with trusting God and spiritual dreams. I’m not going to lie, the spiritual dreams felt a bit reaching to me, but I suppose it worked.

What I didn’t like:

The romance. Several times throughout the book, the important moments in Catherine’s romantic relationship is quickly summarized. We are told she and her guy became friends. But we don’t get to see it come to past (though we see the fruition). We are told that they fell in love. We don’t get to see it.  The relationship happens quickly so that there is one.

This was a pet peeve, but there is the return of a character that is mentioned in book one and I could not understand why the author chose to do it that way.

Romantic Scale: 6.5

Overall, not my favorite in the series, but still very enjoyable.

**I received a copy from Revell. My opinion was not affected in anyway.**