Sabine Starr's "Gone Bad" series

LADY / ANGEL / BRIDE / BELLE GONE BAD

• Link to Book Trailer for Lady Gone Bad  
• Lady Gone Bad video review

Sabine Starr has written a “Gone Bad” series of novels that the genre and marketing folks classify as Western Romances.  Okay. They are westerns, set in the late 1800s in Ms. Starr’s native (from the author’s information) North Texas and Southeastern Indian Territory (today’s Oklahoma), and there is romance in them. But of historical novels I have enjoyed, there were always romance in them.

You learn a lot of history while enjoying a good story with these books
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To me, Sabine Starr gives you real novels, not been-there-before predictability, with great come-alive descriptions of the landscapes in which the stories take place, a nice mix of interesting characters, and of course the “hero” and “heroine.” But don’t expect the main characters or the romance between them to be stereotypes. My advice to any stereotype trying to sneak its way into a Sabine Starr novel is to run for the hills before she fills its bottom with hot lead!
 

Take Belle Gone Bad for example, the newest in the series AmazonLink. The heroine is a serious bounty hunter tracker out for revenge against those who killed her father and fiance. But if you think you’ve been to this round-up before, nope. She has some serious paranormal activity going on, we later learn. So does the hero, for that matter. Yes, paranormal activity in a “western romance.”

This ain’t Gunfight at the O.K. Corral territory, pa’dners. Surprises like that in Belle, and the others in the series, Lady, Angel, and Bride (which can be read in any order, by the way) each holds its own surprises and mysteries waiting to be discovered, is what makes reading still enjoyable.

I hope there are more “Gone Bad” books coming our way.