The Kari AnnAlysis

There’s a new marshal in Blue River, Texas. That’s a good thing right? Unfortunately for Dara Rose, it’s not, because the death of her husband is what left the position open.

She’s at wit’s end trying to make things meet. She refuses to join the women at the Bitter Gulch Saloon and turned down a marriage prospect because there was no way she could leave her girl’s behind.

Matters get worse when Marshal Clay McKettrick moves to town. The town marshal is given a home and it just happens to be the home where Dara Rose and her girls still live after her husband’s death.

To avoid being put out on the streets, Clay offers to live with the Nolan ladies with hopes of making their housing arrangements permanent.

This book is number 14 in the McKettrick series and it’s one that I would never picked up by myself, but absolutely loved. I normally don’t like picking up a series without starting from the beginning, it’s the OCD in me. But this book, I didn’t need to. There were a couple of parts that I’m sure were probably brought up in the previous dozen, but Miller made it work without me having to go back book-through-book. I normally also don’t do much time traveling. Once or twice a year, I’ll pick up a book from a different era, and actually, this is my second to head back to the Old West era in just a few weeks.

One of my favorite parts of this book, from page one was Dara’s daughter Endrina. She is such a firecracker and has great wit. She is much smarter than the 7-year-old whose body she is living in. I longed for more scenes with her in them and laughed out loud countless times when she spoke. She was one of the best characters I’ve come across recently.

This was a predictable love story, but I normally don’t mind predictable when it comes to love. In a mystery, I have a love/hate relationship with figuring out the killer. But in a love story, predictable doesn’t phase me. Give me love, give me sap, make my heart melt.

We all know I’m a Christmasaholic and I originally agreed to read this book, well because it said Christmas in the title. Then I realized my stop on the blog tour was in November. I hated that I couldn’t wait until Christmas, but it’s definitely one I’ll keep around for future holiday seasons.

And I’m really hoping that one day a big wig movie exec will read this book and fall in love with the characters like I did and want to bring them to life. I would absolutely watch this movie as much as I plan to read the book.

If only I would have read this a few years ago, I would have cast the little girl who played the coach’s daughter in We Are the Titans to play Endrina. They both have that spunk and spark.

I absolutely loved this book and hope the other McKettrick boys swoon me as much as Clay did in this one, because I’m definitely picking up more books from this series. I give A Lawman’s Christmas 5 bookmarks.

On a side note, I was checking out Linda Lael Miller’s website and dang, she is a book writing machine. She has books listed by series and in most series’, she cranked out 3-4 books a year for the series. She’s going on my list of people I have to meet so I can pick her brain on writing, how she got started and how she keeps it going.

This review is one of the final stops on a month-long blog tour for the book. Click here to see the other stops and reviews.

ISBN: 978-0373776146
Released: September 27, 2011
Author Website
Kari got this book for a blog tour