Where the Road Bends

First, I'm going to define a trope:  A trope in literary terms is a plot device or character attribute that is used so commonly in the genre that it's seen as commonplace or conventional.  Rachel Fordham used many tropes in her newest novel, so much so that I felt I'd read the book before.  

Here are some of the tropes Rachel used in Where the Road Bends: 

• Norah King finds a man on her farm who has been beaten within an inch of his life and abandoned there.  She drags him back to her house and nurses him back to health.  
• Norah is engaged to a man who promises to help save her farm, but he breaks it off right before the wedding because she helped to nurse  the man she found on her farm. 
• Two years later, the man, Quincy Barnes, finds a street urchin and takes him in, hoping to give the boy a better life than the one he had growing up.  At the same time that Quincy finds the boy, he also finds Norah in less than optimal circumstances and rescues her as well. 
• The man who was mistreating Norah comes back for her and Quincy again rescues her from his clutches. 

When my mother was a teacher, she taught in a small school district that put on a junior and a senior play every year.  Usually the plays were melodramas with bad guys, good guys, damsels in distress, and a few throw-away characters. In some ways this book reminded me of those plays.  That is not to say the book wasn't enjoyable.  It was.  I could engage with the characters, the humor that is woven into the plot is subtle and understated.  It seemed that everyone in the town where the majority of the story takes place is somewhat of a match-maker.  That just added to the fun of the book.  If the novel wasn't so trope-heavy, it would be a five-star book.  Four Stars.

Revell Publishing provided the copy I read for this review.  All opinions expressed are solely my own.