Early Book Review: A Texan's Promise by Shelley Gray

A Texan's Promise by Shelley Gray is a historical Christian romance. It is the first book in The Heart of a Hero Series and is due to be released October 1 2011. One night Clayton Proffitt, trusted foreman of the Circle Z Ranch in Texas, finds Vanessa Grant crying outside his room. He knew things were far from all right. When Clay discovers that Vanessa was attacked and beaten by her callous stepfather, Price Venture, he realizes that the only way to protect Vanessa is to get her far away from Price. They make there way through the landscape toward Clayton's sister. As they travel, the bonds of friendship forge into something more and they each struggle to follow the path set for them by the Lord. A marriage is forged, with the purpose of protecting Vanessa's reputation and from reducing Price's reach. However, could the marriage become what they both need? Everyone makes mistakes along the way, but the hardest thing is trusting in the offered forgiveness and forgiving themselves.

A Texan's Promise has a solid plot, fleshed out characters and well-paced action. The secondary characters were as three dimensional as the main characters, and I occasionally found myself more interested in the action of those characters, including Vanessa's brother Miles and Clayton's sister Corrine and brother in law Merritt , more than the relationship between Vanessa and Clayton. Even some of the characters that we only see in passing were three-dimensional and left me wanting to know more about their stories.

There were some things that did distract me while reading. Vanessa and Clayton both become a little repetitious in their internal dialogue. Not an unusual problem, and is one that is realistic since I know that I often worry about the same issues quite a bit. However, when reading such concerns a few times is enough for me. My other irritation is why I do not often read Christian fiction. It can be done extremely well, but there are also many instances when the religious aspects of the writing become overdone or preachy rather than a cohesive part of the story. A Texan's Promise crossed the line into overdone a few times, and did become a little distracting on occasion. There were moments in the story that did not really seem to flow with the rest of the story and felt like they were added for a little mini sermon rather than for the good of the book as a whole. It was not a constant over doing, but it was occasionally distracting and would likely turn off anyone that was not Christian or has had bad experiences with people pushing their faith at them.

My final verdict is that readers that enjoy Christian fiction will enjoy A Texan's Promise, particularly if they also enjoy westerns or historical fiction. Readers that are easily turned of by Christian fiction, or any religious fiction, might want to skip it. While I normally avoid Christian fiction because of the ease in which it can do wrong, I was interested enough if the well rounded characters that I am probably going to pick up the sequel to see what will happen with my favorite secondary characters.