[BL6]∎ Download Free Conor Way Laura Lee Guhrke 9780061084027 Books

Conor Way Laura Lee Guhrke 9780061084027 Books

Download As PDF : Conor Way Laura Lee Guhrke 9780061084027 Books

Conor Way Laura Lee Guhrke 9780061084027 Books

The main characters are flawed but compelling. Conor tells his backstory in flashbacks that are sometimes hard to read. Olivia is trying to maintain, alone, a property that beyond her abilities.

Conor and Olivia meet when Conor refuses to lose a prizefight in a small, Louisiana town. He is hideously beaten and left for dead on a lonely road. Olivia finds him and nurses him back to health. Olivia has been trying to find a handyman to work for room and board, without success.

At first, Olivia seems to be the rational one, of the pair. She works hard and is sure that something will come about so that she can keep her land (instead of land grabbers forcing her to sell). Before long, Conor's rational attitude that 'it's only land' and that Olivia can start again somewhere else, starts to make sense. The cost seems to be getting too high to keep fighting the land grabbers.

As the story continues, it gets more compelling. A unique story.


Tags : Conor's Way [Laura Lee Guhrke] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Determined to save her post-Civil War plantation, stubborn Olivia Maitland reluctantly enlists the help of ex-boxer Conor Branigan,Laura Lee Guhrke,Conor's Way,Harpercollins,0061084026,Romance - Historical - General,Fiction,Fiction - Romance,Fiction Romance Historical General,Romance - General,Romance - Historical,Romance: Historical

Conor Way Laura Lee Guhrke 9780061084027 Books Reviews

This is an early HR by Guhrke but it's so very well written and polished that I find it even better than some of her later work, and I've read lots of, maybe most of, Guhrke's paperback romances. Her later HRs take place mostly in England. Her earlier ones are, for the most part, I believe, in 1800s U.S.

In the 1870s heroine Olivia is raising the 3 orphaned daughters of a friend all on her own, living on what was formerly a cotton plantation in Louisiana, but now converted, after the Civil War, into mostly a peach orchard. She is struggling to make ends meet and needs help, since her only hired hand, former slave Nat, has recently died.

Hero Conor, formerly of Ireland, is now in the U.S. traveling around making a scrabbling living by participating in boxing matches. He has a past full of troubling times in Ireland, having lost all his loved ones either to the Great Potato Famine or to British occupiers' violence. He himself joined the Irish rebellion and was captured and tortured for some years by the British. Finally released from prison, he is a bitter and tortured soul, and the flashbacks to his Irish past are excellently done and very moving.

Conor lost everyone he loved and now believes he is better off without anyone since the pain of again losing anyone dear to him is almost unbearable. So he keeps himself closed off to the possibility of love and does not wish to settle down anywhere. If he keeps moving around, he will not learn to like, much less love, anyone. Guhrke has given Conor an excellent, complex character. He may be bitter and withdrawn, but he is admirable and honorable underneath that gruff exterior.

Olivia is a lovely character too but not as interesting as Conor. She is perhaps just a little too sweet, perfect and noble for my taste but it works well in this story and she does not annoy in her nobility. Her relationship to her adopted daughters is well drawn and the two youngest girls are, let's face it, adorable in their interactions with Conor. This is another first for me, really liking having kids in starring roles in a romance. I often find them annoying but not here. They're very important to the healing of Conor's psyche.

There's a bad guy here who wants to buy Olivia's land to build a railroad running through there. It's the same bad guy who has Conor beaten up very badly at the beginning of the story and left for dead. Olivia finds Conor, takes care of him until he heals and the rest is for you to read and enjoy because it's a very beautiful and touching love story. Lots of interesting secondary characters and, don't forget, besides the love story there's also the drama of saving Olivia's land from the bad guys.
I am usually very wary and skeptical about reading "Irish" characters in novels - sometimes we are portrayed like Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Far and Away with dreadful Irish accents and sayings (Hollywood portrayal of the Irish like leprechauns in Darby O'Gill and the Little People - cringeworthy) and the fact that this book was only 99 cents had me between two minds whether to buy it or not - but I did and I am very glad I did. The story is very well written and like another reviewer said, I am not a big fan of flashback stories either but we had to have these in order to understand Conor. The history was very well researched and brought back to me my history lessons during my school years. Made me want to revisit the history books again and catch up on bits I had forgotten. Yes, Conor uses bad language but I think most Irish people do - I know it comes automatically to me sometimes whether I like it or not. My only gripe was that some of the Gaelic/Gaeilge was incorrect - wrong accents on letters etc. but that is only because I know the language - could have been a problem scanning the book for KINDLE or something like that - apart from that I would highly recommend this book even if you want to find about a bit of Irish history also. She had all the Irish expressions correct, even the "cup of tay" (think I will have one now actually) Must check out some more of this author's work.
Good book, good story. The somewhat unusual way Gurke reveals Conor's history in flashbacks throughout the book helps to keep some of the focus on the background of his character as it defines his present. Olivia's insistence on keeping a farm she can not hope to maintain on her own, and her ignorance about the lengths the land grabber will go to to get it is a bit annoying as is her failure to understand the danger this represents for the children. The book is about 1/3 too long, the introspection gets a bit tedious in the second half of the book so don't be discouraged if you find yourself skipping over the "I've been here before" sections. It is still a good read with well developed main characters and an interesting story line.
This book merits about 2.5 stars, to me. I decided to be a little generous with 3 stars. I was just let down by the story and writing! I thought a former boxer sounded like such a great hero, and Conor has such fascinating history/back story...but then he turns out to be pretty boring overall, with hardly any challenge to becoming a regular, fully functional adult and partner. The heroine was boring too, and the pace of this story was pretty slow.

Oh, also — there was a lot of God/Christianity stuff in the book coming from the heroine; like she wanted to save the hero's soul. That kind of stuff doesn't appeal to me. But the weirdest part was, it didn't really go anywhere. The hero never seemed to accept Christ as his savior or trust in God's path for him or whatever he was supposed to do in the heroine's eyes. So that element might as well not have been a part of the story at all — and IMO, it would have been a better story without it.
The main characters are flawed but compelling. Conor tells his backstory in flashbacks that are sometimes hard to read. Olivia is trying to maintain, alone, a property that beyond her abilities.

Conor and Olivia meet when Conor refuses to lose a prizefight in a small, Louisiana town. He is hideously beaten and left for dead on a lonely road. Olivia finds him and nurses him back to health. Olivia has been trying to find a handyman to work for room and board, without success.

At first, Olivia seems to be the rational one, of the pair. She works hard and is sure that something will come about so that she can keep her land (instead of land grabbers forcing her to sell). Before long, Conor's rational attitude that 'it's only land' and that Olivia can start again somewhere else, starts to make sense. The cost seems to be getting too high to keep fighting the land grabbers.

As the story continues, it gets more compelling. A unique story.