Happily Ever After - Reads: Review—Tangled Past, by Leah Braemel

Forced to marry a man she just met, Sarah McLeod clings to the hope that she'll finally find the love and acceptance she's always craved. Her tenuous dreams of a happy life on the frontier are in danger of being dashed by the one thing she can't change-her husband's love for another man.

Jackson Kellar's determined to do right by his bride, yet he's torn between his newfound love for Sarah and his still-burning desire for Nate.

Ranch owner Nate Campbell loves them both. He hates to see Jackson's loyalties so divided, and doesn't want Sarah hurt either. How can they fix the tangled mess they find themselves in? Nate suggests a possible solution-a permanent threesome.

With the open frontier closing in around them, is Nate's solution their path to happiness-or will others destroy what they've found together?

Originally, I was interested in Tangled Past because I read and enjoyed Leah Braemel’s Texas Tangle. I had assumed that Tangled Past, sharing a similar title and all, was a sequel to Texas Tangle. You know what they say about assumptions! While it is a part of the "Tangle" series, one does NOT have to have read Texas Tangle to read Tangled Past. Although, according to Braemel's website, the book was inspired by a scene from Texas Tangle where one character's grandmother reflects on her own grandparents' polyamorous union, which I would never have realized if I hadn't visited her website!

I was instantly, and very pleasantly surprised to read the opening scene took place in Texas…1887.

I’ve only read a handful of historical novels, something I’ve actually been meaning to remedy. Add in this historical's erotic romance elements, the possibilities for a hot Western ménage scenario, and yummy m/m scenes, and this was a book with a little bit of everything I didn’t know I was looking for, but was glad I found!

Although this wasn’t the typical ménage, where the three main characters are in a seemingly constant state of heated bliss together, rather a story with a lot of character development leading into the expected scenario. Not that the whole book is lacking on the hotness front, as there is a good amount of hot coupling between one of the heroes and their heroine throughout.

The two heroes in Tangled Past, Jackson and Nate, pulled at my heartstrings from the get go. While m/m love is readily accepted today, it was certainly not acceptable in the late 1800’s. Jackson and Nate are under constant threat of being hanged if the true nature of their relationship is ever exposed. Since both like men and women, they are at a point in their lives where they have begun to accept the inevitability of settling down with women, and ending their intimate relationship, as would be the only socially acceptable thing to do.

When Sarah, the virginal, unloved heroine, catches Jackson and Nate in the act while they are guests on Sarah's family ranch, she’s thrown into a gamut of emotions ranging from shock to lust. When the tables are turned moments later, as Sarah’s resentful father (and we learn more about his reasons for being an a-hole in this story) walks in on her standing with a naked Jackson and half clothed Nate, he finds the excuse he’s been looking for to give Sarah the boot for good, under the guise of forcing Jackson to make a proper woman out of Sarah, by fetching a preacher to marry the two at once—though they’ve actually done no more than look at each other by that point.

I loved Jackson. My heart broke for him being forced to marry a woman he just met, when he’s in love with his male best friend. But during the entire story Jackson strives to be a good husband to Sarah, honoring the marital vows he took, regardless of having been forced into the union. It doesn’t take long for their happenstance marriage to blossom into more, however. All the while, Nate struggles with his own feelings for Jackson as well as the feelings he's begun to have for Sarah, and eventually offers up a proposition for the three of them that he hopes will make them all happy once and for all.

While I don’t see a woman being forced to marry a complete stranger just because her daddy thinks she’s been deflowered, happening in present day America, it certainly seems more than plausible in the 1800’s, and the scenario definitely lends to a good amount of angst in this book, which I always appreciate.

For being a shorter book, at under 2,000 Kindle pages, Tangled Past had a good mixture of sex to plot, and a great amount of character development. I appreciate Leah Braemel getting me back into reading historicals and I look forward to reading more from her in the future!

I give Tangled past 4 stars