Simply Angela : Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Heartbreaker by Diana Palmer

STONE-COLD COWBOY

Wealthy Texas cattle rancher J. B. Hammock was proud of his reputation as a heartbreaker. He treated his women well, but they all knew they would never have a permanent status in his life—all but one. Innocent Tellie Maddox had been just a girl when she’d been orphaned and had come to live with his family. She was fiercely devoted to J.B., but when that devotion turned into something passionate between them, J.B. knew he had to break yet another heart.

Tellie hated him for that—until she lost her memory in an accident. Now all she remembered was the closeness she and J.B. once shared. He didn’t want to hurt her all over again, but it quickly became clear that there was too much fire between him and Tellie for them to ever just be friends. And the deeper their feelings grew, the more J.B. feared the inevitable return of Tellie’s memory….

Heartbreaker just didn’t work for me. Rather than immersing me in the story, I felt as though the narrator was giving me a choppy retelling of a story they heard through the grapevine. And the hero and heroine were cringe-worthy. I tried so so so hard to find something I liked about them but I came up empty handed.

Tellie is almost twenty-two yet she acts so immature it’s downright annoying. Really, I wanted to reach in a smack her and tell her to grow up and move on. Anywho, she has this mad crush/obsession with J.B. and she’s drooling over him like a Saint Bernard even though—wait for it—he’s parading his flavor of the week, a buxom blonde whose about as deep as a puddle, around Tellie just to hurt her.

Rather than growing up and going on with her life, she’s all I-love-him-I-want-to-marry-him-my-life-is-over-without-him. I mean, seriously!?!?! What kind of bloody heroine is she supposed to be? I don’t understand people like her. I can’t stand people like her. Then to add to the insanity of an already screwed up plot, Tellie gets in an accident, gets amnesia, thinks she’s seventeen again and that she and J.B. go together like peanut butter and jelly. Cue the googly eyes and teenage angst.

J.B. is a complete and utter dickhead/arsehat/wanker. The guy is most definitely an anti-hero, why in the world he was even in a romance novel, I will never know. Throughout 80% of the novel, he was intent on doing things just to hurt Tellie. Then when he finally saw the light, he was still a wanker.

I would have been so happy if this novel would have ended with Tellie telling J.B. to sod off.

So, this was my first time reading a Diana Palmer novel and if I’m being honest, I’m not sure that I will be reading another one. I think my brain might implode if I read another romance like this one.

Overall, this one would have been a DNF, although I kept reading hoping to see some road-to-Damascus moment with J.B. or a moment of clarity with Tellie but it never happened.

Just a F.Y.I., this book was originally released in 2006 and was re-issued in 2015 in Harlequin’s Bestselling Author Collection. This release also includes In Bed with the Wrangler by Barbara Dunlop, but I haven’t been brave enough to read it just yet.