Hero in Disguise

Rating:
Summary: Tyler Hometown Reunion #4
Review: HERO IN DISGUISE - Vicki Lewis Thompson

When Sauk warriors pitched wigwams at Timberlake Lodge and
started reenacting the wars of 1832, manager Sheila Lawson
didn't blink an eye, until she caught sight of their
magnificent leader.
She got to play his tent mate and wanted to make it authentic.
But shockingly, Chief Black Hawk turned into her former high
school history teacher, Mr. Wagner, who kept getting in the
way of the fantasy.

In an act of insurrection she took him captive, demanding he
forget about propriety and love her for her body, not her
mind. Would a good warrior surrender?

Rating:
Summary: Unsatisfying one-sided romance
Review: One of the worst things to find in a romance is the fact that the emotional exchange and growth in a relationship winds up being all one-sided as is the case with this book. This romance is one of those almost forbidden kind of romances as the hero Douglas was once the history teacher (13 years ago) to the heroine Sheila when she was in high school. Obviously the taboo is no longer there about a relationship but the whole idea isn't really presented with a lot of believability. The romance is presented very simplistically as a case of "he was in lust with her when he was her teacher and she had a crush on him when she was his student (unbeknownst to each other), they meet again 13 years later and fall in love". Unfortunately I never believed that Sheila ever was really in love, rather just continuing in her crush as she never has credible real adult feelings conveyed in the story. When the inevitable conflict arises in the story and the "big argument" surfaces, Sheila continues in her rather insecure, emotionally-stunted fashion and lashes out very nastily and childishly with some extremely hurtful comments about Douglas. Afterwards she gets all whiney that Douglas walks out on her and goes after him only after prompting by her father, and when she catches up to him she never sincerely apologizes (at least I didn't believe it) for her comments. Another crisis turns up right afterwards (and anyone with half a brain cell would have figured out that this little scenario was going to happen as soon as they were introduced to the three main characters, Douglas, Sheila and Sheila's father) wherein the hero saves the day, forgives his childish love's ill-will and they live happily ever after. The book up to the big argument was a pretty solid 3-star fluff romance (not great but not bad) but fell to a 0-star afterwards and never recovered. Sheila never faces her own insecurities and never grows as a person at all while Douglas does face his own problems mostly and shows growth. I cannot really see a true happily-ever-after type of marriage coming out of this romance as only the hero really is showing any effort and the heroine would probably lapse back into her nasty behavior and there was no true closure to the heroine's background storyline.