Youth and the West

My review of Matthew by Emma Lang went live on AAR today.  This was a maddening book that should have been fun to read.  But Matthew at 25 alternately whined and commanded like someone in his early teens. Why any woman would be attracted to this idiot is beyond me.

If the main character and the plot (marriage for Matthew's convenience) weren't enough, the PhotoShopped cover is totally impossible.  First there's the Matthew character looking much older than the whiny 25-year-old in the book.  Worse is his poor shoulder which looks like a ham-handed doctor or neophyte PhotoShopper "fixed" it.

To compound the problems are the wild-looking horses in the lower left corner.  Horses?  Yeah, sure, Matthew is a rancher, but horses have so little to do with the plot that it took me a moment to figure out what they might be doing on the cover.

All in all, the entire package of Matthew is a mess.  I read so you won't have to.