Review: A Wedding at Windaroo by Barbara Hannay

Barbara Hannay is a prolific Australian author, who writes romances featuring spirited heroines and their strong, sturdy soul mates. Numerous readers have recommended her novels to me, however, it wasn't until I found one of her books on a sale table that I decided to give it a chance. When I got the book--titled Inheritance--home, I discovered that it was actually a bind up of three Mills & Boon novels that the author had written and published about fifteen years ago. This was a little awkward--while I've got nothing against Mills & Boon and can see their escapist value--I'm also not normally that kind of a reader. Then again, a lot of people had recommended the author to me, I'd paid for the book and I figured that I may as well give at least one of these stories a go. I chose the first volume, A Wedding at Windaroo, as it looked like a nice enough story.

Piper O'Malley is a woman with a problem. A big problem. Her loving but somewhat scheming granddad won't leave the family cattle station to her unless she gets married. This causes the tomboyish Piper to go on a quest to basically change everything about herself so that she can trap a man. Her childhood friend Gabe is reluctantly recruited to help and from there everyone (especially a delighted granddad,) can see what is going on between the pair, except for Piper and Gabe.

I'd probably describe this one as fun and flirty, a great escapist read that delivers on everything it promises, along with the usual tomboy-in-Aussie-romance tropes and a romanticised glimpse at the outback and cattle farming. I don't want to criticise the book for its lack of depth, because hey, I read the book knowing what it was and what its aims were, and I think it succeeded. (Let's face it, no one picks up a novel titled A Wedding at Windaroo and starts wondering whether or not it should have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize.) The whole thing is pleasant enough and it isn't difficult to see why the author is popular with lovers of romance novels.

This book was read as part of the Aussie Author Challenge 2018

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