Badlands by Jill Sorenson = Bad Book

Badlands (Hqn) by Sorenson, Jill (Dec 31, 2013)

• $6.15 Kindle Edition
• Available for Pre-order. This item will be released on December 31, 2013.
• $7.99 $7.19 Mass Market Paperback
• Available for Pre-order. This item will be released on December 31, 2013.

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2014

Love is the most dangerous territory of all
Every day, bodyguard Owen Jackson puts his life on the line—and keeps his feelings for Penny Sandoval locked away. Assigned to protect Penny's father, a presidential candidate, Owen can't get emotionally involved. That is, until Penny and her young son, Cruz, are abducted and taken deep into the California badlands.
Owen knows the bleak territory from his childhood. Worse, he knows the gang leader making ransom demands—his own brother, Shane. When a terrified Penny escapes into the desert with Cruz, Owen has to save her: from the elements and from the gang in close pursuit. Owen has hidden the darkness in his past from Penny. Now his only chance of keeping her alive is to let her see the man he really is—even if it means losing the only woman he'll ever want.

It is difficult for words to even begin to describe this romance novel. I understand that this is a work of fiction and a romance no less...but it is not science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy or a dystopian society or even where the rules of common sense have no meaning anymore. In these genres you need that lack of common sense sometimes to push the plot along..

In this book, we have the first Mexican American running for president.  One of his daughters had a baby out of wedlock and it makes it difficult for her father to keep his credibility with his 'family values' platform.  The daughter Penny Sandoval and her son Cruz are being guarded by a man who is an ex-con, a past member of the Aryan Brotherhood, can't carry a gun, has no formal training in body guarding and can't even fight properly.

 Penny, Cruz and Owen (the body guard) are taken prisoners during a convention by Owens’s brother (?/!), now they need to escape and find help.

Throughout all of this Owen and Penny each have a huge crush on each other, but angst (very boring...beating a dead horse anyone?) and a false sense propriety keeps them apart.

This book is trite and clichéd... and that can usually be brushed off with this genre, because of what romance is.  Romance seems to be a work that really seems to have some strict rules of writing.

However, this book not only is as I said trite and clichéd; the characters have absolutely no chemistry, the child seems to have been written as an afterthought and the outside evil forces/kidnappers are such that I just wanted to laugh at the stereotypical aspects of them.

I could find nothing that would redeem this novel.*ARC Supplied by Publisher*