Rating: 4 stars
Buy Link: Amazon | iBooks | Amazon UK
Length: Novel
Damien counts Jonnie, Knott, and Ostra among his found family. They are a long way from home when Jonnie’s sister gets word to them about trouble on her homestead. To get there quickly, Damien needs a guide to take them through the treacherous Sun’s Scar…and hope like hell the undeserved bounty on his head won’t keep any guides away. Luckily, Damien finds a guide and catches the eye of the man’s young son, Star. The attraction burns hotly for both Damien and Star, but Star’s father is wary of his son getting attached. After all, the man knows just how sour attachments can get and, for him and his son, they can be deadly.
Star may be twenty-one, but his father, Ty, and family friend, Bill, still see him as a kid. Nevertheless, they allow Star to scratch a certain itch with their latest client. To Star’s utter surprise, one night with Damien isn’t enough to slake his lust or satisfy his curiosity. As he, Damien, and the rest of their group embark on a journey northward to help Jonnie’s sister, Star only grows more attracted to Damien. But when Ty learns exactly who put a bounty on Damien’s head, he is convinced that it makes Damien a target for trouble and, by extension, Star. Things go from bad to worse when they discover that the trouble that Damien and his group are riding for is intricately connected to a violent past Ty has spent the last 21 years trying to escape.
Guided by the Wind is a contemporary, western-flavored romance adventure with a dash of the paranormal. There is a huge cast of characters and I felt like there was a good balance in terms of who’s driving the plot forward. The fight scenes also took on extra weight because I felt more invested in more characters than just Star and Damien. For example, Ty and his friend Bill are so prominent during the first half of the story, they are virtually main characters. During a mid-story climax, a character death shifts the dynamic among all the principal characters in surprising and angsty ways.
For me, the plot really drove the story. The large cast and their layered relationships worked to build a story and a backstory that was carefully pieced together. Initially, I was frustrated with the trickle of backstory. Star and Ty’s past controls their on-page lives like nothing else, but not even straight up flashbacks to significant events in Ty’s past were enough for me to understand why the past has such power over the present. The saving grace was how Star was very vocal about this paucity of information, giving my frustration an outlet and hope that everything would eventually gel. Finally, towards the final third of the story, the myriad details started to come together into a more coherent whole (or, maybe it’s more accurate to say the myriad groups fell into two camps: good guys and bad guys).
Damien and Star are ostensibly our two main characters, as well as being the love interests. The instant attraction between Star and Damien was fun and I enjoyed how one roll in the hay seemed to open the doors to both of them wanting more for the first time in their lives. After that, I was a little unclear about what exactly happens that brings these two from “raging hormones” to “true love.” Scenes that focused on these two getting to actually know each other felt sparse, let alone time or experiences that would inspire love to grow between them. When these two face a significant emotional event that leaves one of them dealing with feelings of resentment towards the other, it fell a little flat for me when I felt so little shared connection between them. (Note: There’s plenty of “I think I’m falling for him” or “this is more than lust” or “my man” references, but that’s the start and end of it.)
Overall, I think this was a pretty solid mystery-adventure story with an okay romance tacked on. With so many characters, past, present, alive, and deceased, it was a challenge to even try keeping track of who’s who. That created a sort of mixed bag–it was frustrating finding out details, but not knowing how much weight they carried, but it also helped mask some big twists in the story. If you like puzzles or plot twists, I think you’ll find some doozies in this book. Fans of westerns and adventure are sure to enjoy the wild, untamed frontier our MCs traverse, along with the seemingly insurmountable odds of beating all the bad guys. If you’re into plot-driven stories with well developed characters and complex story lines, then you’ll probably enjoy this.
