TBR Challenge 2009: Review: Snowbound by Janice Kay Johnson

This year, I decided to participate in Avid Reader's TBR Challenge 2009. I decided I wanted to post the books I read over on LJ rather than on The Good, the Bad, and the Unread, because I thought that way if I ever came down to the wire and wrote something up at 11:59 on a Wednesday, it could still count.

Anyway, this year she did things a bit differently and assigned us different reading goals. This month, we were to read a category romance. Since one of my best discoveries last year was the romance of Janice Kay Johnson, and since I had one of her books in my TBR pile, I decided she'd be a perfect place to start.

So, without further ado:

Title: Snowbound
Author: Janice Kay Johnson
Genre: Contemporary Romance
Publisher: Harlequin Super Romance
Publication Date: November 6, 2007
Summary: When a blizzard strands Fiona MacPherson and her students in Oregon's Cascade Mountains, their only hope of survival is to seek shelter at Thunder Mountain Lodge. Their host is John Fallon, a handsome, enigmatic war veteran haunted by secrets and scars that may never heal.

John Fallon never imagined he'd be playing host to this captivating teacher and her eight teenage charges. But when his solitude is shattered by their arrival, his world shifts on its axis. He needs Fiona—but does she need him? There's only one way to find out. The ex-soldier must find the courage to reach out to the remarkable woman who has transformed his life.…


I really enjoyed this book. Ms. Johnson manages to pack a lot into such a short novel, and for the most part I believed in her characters. I'm a sucker for the kind of tortured hero who is stoic about his torture, and John is. He's suffering from serious PTSD, but I felt like he also did a good job of getting on with his life as best he could under the circumstances.

Fiona I liked well enough, but not as much as I liked John. I think I would kill to read a contemporary romance where I actually bought that the heroine was a woman in her mid-to-late twenties. Because Fiona's my age, and I'm pretty sure that I don't have any age-mates who say, "Goodness!" or "Darn!" as much as she does. Granted, she's a teacher, so some of that was understandable, but when she's thinking things like 'Darn' or 'heck', I don't know. It just seems a bit silly and needlessly prudish considering the fact that John swears quite a bit.

That's a pretty minor quibble, though, for what was essentially a very cute, emotional story. I especially liked that all the teenagers felt like real teenagers, and they created some of the more amusing scenes in the book.

Oh, and I also liked the end. It's definitely the romance requisite happily ever after, but it's handled realistically. John is still healing, and he's not miraculously cured by Fiona's magical vajayjay, so they'll still have their issues. But that's OK, because I felt they were strong enough as a couple.



Final Grade: B

• February: Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale (A lot of people love this book, and it got a Desert Isle Keeper review from All About Romance
  
• March: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory (historical fiction)
  
• April: The Wild Swans by Peg Kerr
  
• May: When He Was Wicked by Julia Quinn.
  
• June: Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh.
  
• July: The Skypirate by Justine Davis,
  
• August: Bo Crusoe by Carla Kelly
  
• September: The Smoke Thief by Shana Abe
  
• October: Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
  
• November: An Enchanted Season anthology
  
• December: The Magical Christmas Cat anthology

Aren't you glad you read all that?