"A Delicious End to the Harts Saga"

LIONHEARTED is the 5th and unfortunately final book in the saga of the Hart brothers of Jacobsville, Texas. Luckily there are still more Long Tall Texans to come, but the Hart Brothers have been a really delightful bunch. The Harts at the beginning of the series were a crew of misanthropic alpha males, who had a painful childhood and REALLY loved biscuits. Throughout the course of this series each man met his match and left the main Ranch house for domestic bliss in his own home.

35 year old Leo Hart is the lone holdout bachelor as LIONHEARTED opens, rattling around in the now empty main house. Readers have seen Leo fighting off the advances of Janie Brewster in his brother's books. In the previous books, Janie caught the bouquet at the weddings of Rey Hart and mercenary Micah Steele, which earned her a pair of glares from Leo.

Janie is a 21 year old who knows what she wants in life and that something is Leo Hart. Janie has loved him forever and has done everything that she can think of to interest him. Unbeknownst to Leo she is even trying to master biscuit making. But, Leo remains impervious to Janie's efforts and things go from bad to worse when he believes negative tales about Janie, loses his temper and convinces Janie he will never care about her.

Watching Leo try to undo the damage he has done, all the while trying to convince himself he doesn't love Janie and that she is too young for him is prime Palmer territory. When it comes to her heroes getting their comeuppance Palmer never disappoints and watching Leo squirm and grovel is one of the true joys in LIONHEARTED.

I love Palmer and her alpha men are one of my guilty pleasures. I do love watching them brought to their knees by a sweet young thing. Of course in reality one would have to kill them--but they do make a nice fantasy. The happilyeverafter is believable because Janie is very much a strong modern woman with pride and a temper that will enable her to go toe to toe with Leo throughout their lives.

One of the hallmarks of this series has been the 'wedding planners' and I was laughing out loud as the planners had their revenge on Leo at book's end .

This was a fun book and nicely sets up the characters and villain for Palmer's next book LAWLESS (7/2003), leaving the reader tantalized, but wrapping up enough loose ends to make this book seem complete.

I love Jacobsville, it is a strange little Texas town peopled by ex-mercenaries, biscuit eaters and lots of older men married to MUCH younger women. Luckily, since it is a town in Texas there is always plenty of room to expand it's population, which as Martha Stewart would say, is a GOOD thing.

Reviewed by Linda Hurst
Posted December 12, 2002

Summary

In this 23rd original story in Diana's successful Long Tall Texans series, the residents of Jacobsville are whispering about Janie Brewster's hopeless crush on dynamic cattleman Leo Hart. The starry-eyed debutante comes up with the perfect self-improvement campaign to dazzle Leo—she'll become a courageous cowgirl to lasso the last Hart bachelor.