Synopsis: Mardie was a stranger to the lonely Outback, but she was determined to live in the general store that was her inheritance. However, she fell in love with her very first customer - a handsome taciturn geologist - and was immediately involved in his life. His problems were now hers - and that included two mineral-exploration spies and one troublesome woman...
I adore Lucy Walker. I love her romances as much as I love brownies or chocolate chip cookies. I have a bunch of them in my TBR pile, and I ration them out, cuz I know when I finish the last one I'll be very sad.
Girl Alone, however, did not quite live up to what I've become accustomed to. It was a little - dare I say it? - boring. Mardie is a great heroine, like all of Walker's heroines. I can't really say much about Jard, the hero, as I really did not get to know him, at all.
Mardie is quite taken with Jard from the moment she sees him, even though she only gets a fleeting glimpse of him. Unlike all the other customers in the area, he doesn't eagerly come in to meet the new owner of the store but just goes about his business. His hat shades his face so she doesn't even really know what he looks like.
For most of the book, Mardie and Jard are in different locations and rarely interact with each other. At one point, when they run into each other while taking animals to see the vet, they do finally have a conversation, and Jard invites her for a ride in his plane. But then they crash, and Jard is unconscious until help arrives and he's taken off with the medics while she goes home.
The immediate aftermath of the crash is the best scene in the book. Their night together in the cold outback later causes a mild scandal, and I was a bit surprised by Mardie's daring action, simply because Walker's books are always so tame and quaint. As with all her books, there is no sex, nothing more than some chaste kisses. But one character does say "bitch" one time, which was another shocker for a Walker book.
I just wish the beginning and ending of the book had been as good as that plane crash chapter.
(I was given this book by my mother.)
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