Welcome to StoreyBook Reviews and today’s stop on the Born to be Wild Blog Tour by Entangled Publishing.

Title: Born to be Wild
Author: Patricia Rosemoor
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Length: 304 pages
Release Date: October 2012
Imprint: Dead Sexy

With 90 novels and more than seven million books in print, Patricia Rosemoor is fascinated with “dangerous love” – combining romance with danger. She has written various forms of romantic and paranormal romantic thrillers, even romantic horror, bringing a different mix of thrills and chills to her stories.

Patricia has won a Golden Heart from Romance Writers of America and two Reviewers Choice and two Career Achievement Awards from RT BOOKreviews, and in her other life, she teaches Popular Fiction and Suspense-Thriller Writing, credit courses at Columbia College Chicago. Three of her Columbia grad students and two students from other venues are now published in novel-length fiction.

Synopsis:

It’s been twelve long years since Western rancher Micah Wild gave up all hope of being with his forbidden high school love—and the child they created together. When she tells him that their daughter has been kidnapped, they must reunite to convince their stubborn families to set aside a generations-long feud and help save their little girl.

As old emotions are churned up—and love is rediscovered—Micah doesn’t know how he’s survived without Isabel Falcon in his life. After so many years and painful betrayals, can he win her heart again, rescue their child, and find a way for them to finally become the loving family they should have been all along?

Excerpt:

Prologue

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Present Day

Late…late…late…

Tearing her gaze from the dash clock back to the road, Isabel Falcon raced home from a boring photo shoot that had taken longer than she’d expected. And all for a fluff piece on designer shoes. Though she preferred her tougher assignments like storms and fires and crime scenes, she was the lone female freelance photographer for the Santa Fe Courier, so of course all fluff pieces fell to her.

Too bad four-inch heels weren’t her thing.

Now if they had been boots…

She jammed one of her favorite red napa cowgirl boots to the accelerator and, praying no patrol cop was lying in wait along the route, sped the last half mile to her turnoff. If she hurried, she might be able to get home just as Lucy got off the school bus. Thankfully, the rain had stopped an hour before and the spring day had grown pleasant.

She turned onto Canyon Road and had to slow down.

“C’mon, c’mon,” she muttered, more irritated than usual at the traffic along the strip of pricey galleries peppered with fine restaurants.

Isabel wanted her daughter to know she could count on her being there when she got home. Lucy’s life had been thrown into a mess the past month. She didn’t need her routine broken. And she shouldn’t have to question whether or not she could count on her mother—they’d been having enough trouble as it was lately.

Isabel turned off the main road into the quieter neighboring area, part of the Historic Eastside, populated with homes that had been there for more than a century. A half mile in, she spotted the school bus several houses past her own. Lucy must have just been let off.

Not that she saw her daughter as she pulled in front of the neat adobe casita with its stone pathway to the portal—a covered porch that stretched across the front of the house. Lucy must have gone inside already, using the key hidden in a planter in the midst of a half-dozen others.

But when Isabel walked up the still-wet path and got to the front door, it was not only locked, but dead-bolted. Odd. Normally they only used the dead bolt when no one was home or late at night.

“Lucy, honey, where are you?” she called the moment she got inside. “Sorry I’m late.”

Isabel still freelanced rather than taking a nine-to-five job so she could always be there to meet the school bus when her daughter alighted. And when she occasionally had to work in the afternoon, her mother would come by to make sure the girl wasn’t alone. Eleven now, Lucy would roll her eyes and say she didn’t need her mother to make her look like a baby by standing out where the other kids could see her. Isabel knew that Lucy needed her more than ever after the terrible traffic accident she’d been in a few months before, because she still had terrifying nightmares that replayed the incident. Remembering the scene of the crash, Isabel had nightmares, too.

“Lucinda Falcon, where are you?”

To honor her daughter’s pride, Isabel had started retreating to the vestibule of their casita to wait for the school bus. And once out of sight of her friends, Lucy always gave her a big hug before going to the kitchen to raid the refrigerator.

Only Isabel had been late.

And Lucy wasn’t home.

Where in the world could she be?

Okay, had Lucy decided to scare her on purpose to show her independence? They’d had a series of arguments over the past few weeks about what Lucy could or could not do. The accident had made not-so-subtle changes in her daughter. There were times when Lucy was moody…or fearful…or defiant. She was getting counseling, but Isabel couldn’t tell whether or not it was working.

Lucy didn’t want to talk about it, not to her.

Sighing, she called her daughter’s best friend, Brittany. Surely Lucy’s best friend would know what she was up to.

“Did Lucy go home with you?” she asked.

“No, Ms. Falcon. I don’t know where she is. She wasn’t on the school bus.”

That gave Isabel a start. “And you didn’t see where she went?”

“I’m sorry. She said she would be a minute, and I was talking to someone. I didn’t even notice she wasn’t on the bus until we were on the road. I thought maybe you stopped by to get her.”

Isabel’s pulse picked up a beat. “Thanks, Brittany.”

Telling herself there was a rational explanation—no need to panic—she next called the school. The woman in the office checked for her, but no one had seen Lucy there since school let out.

Isabel’s chest squeezed tight as it had the day of the accident when, for several minutes, she hadn’t known whether or not her daughter was dead or simply trapped in the overturned bus.

Panic filled her so she couldn’t breathe.

Couldn’t think.

What to do?

She didn’t know.

Micah would know what to do.

As much as she hated to involve Micah Wild in anything that had to do with her, Lucy was his daughter, too. Putting aside her own feelings, she picked up the phone and called him.

Read more of the excerpt here

Review:

I picked this e-book up and over lunch had read about 1/3 of the book…I guess you could say that I was hooked on this romantic suspense novel.  The characters were very realistic and the kidnapping of their daughter could have happened anywhere and is a story we see in the news sadly too often.  And what sort of story would it be if the main characters didn’t do some stupid things (like trying to find the kidnapper themselves and not keep the police in the loop?!) but that is to be expected, otherwise you wouldn’t want to reach into the book and shake them, but that is what makes for a good story, characters that evoke various emotions!

Overall I really enjoyed this book and give it 4 paws.