The Man For Her by Alice Valdal

The Man for Her is really a sad book. I went back and forth with feeling like I wanted to slap some sense into lottie and thinking awww true love will wait a lifetime. But I had a hard time with the setup, I had a hard time believing she was in love and loved in return. I think you are suppose to feel that way, given that Patrick isn't the hero of the book but I just couldn't get past it or stop thinking about it. Patrick and Lottie's story is pretty much... A woman and man fall in love. He buys some nice property for them to settle down and raise a family but first he goes off to look for gold - one last time. THEN he is going to come home, marry her and they will live HEA. 10 years later, she is still waiting. 10 years! She has been waiting for him for 10 years, with their son! Now I could never decide if he did or did not know about the son when he left, but he knew he fucked her and I am taking a guess he knew where babies came from. So explain why any man in love, really in love, would leave his love alone, unmarried and maybe carrying his child in 1876. Even if I could buy that he would leave her for his golden whore, just one last time, why wouldn't he marry her first? That sort of soured the whole thing for me, even though Patrick is never really in the story, he is apart of it. The book opens with it being 1886 and 'Crazy Lottie' running into Sean O'Connor. Their eyes met and for just a moment Lottie thinks Patrick has finally come home to her. You very quickly find out Sean is his cousin. And he tell her, the day after he follows her to her ranch looking for work so he can earn money to (you guessed it) go find gold and make his fortune. I love that isn't some big ol secret he is Patrick's cousin and we don't suffer from the BIGMIS. All in all the story is nicely written, for what I think is a first time writer. But I could never buy Patrick was a good man or he had been in love. And I so couldn't see a woman (who was pretty much a lady at the start), alone, making a ranch successful in this time frame. Has anyone heard of Alice Valdal?