Review: Love on the Line by Deeanne Gist

Book Cover and Synopsis:

Rural switchboard operator Georgie Gail is proud of her independence in a man's world ... which makes it twice as vexing when the telephone company sends a man to look over her shoulder.

Dashing Luke Palmer is more than he appears though. He's a Texas Ranger working undercover to infiltrate a notorious gang of train robbers. Repairing telephones and tangling with this tempestuous woman is the last thing he wants to do. But when his stakeout puts Georgie in peril, he realizes more than his job is on the line.

My Thoughts:
As commonplace as telephones are nowadays, it's easy to forget their humble beginnings and the ladies who manually connected each call through large switchboards. "Love on the Line" brightly paints this era of the past, easily bringing it to life in full color.

Georgie is quite the character, being an independent single woman in a time when such a thing was truly unusual. Her job as a rural switchboard operator is simply fascinating, and I loved reading about the "party lines" that I've heard my grandmother talk about!! I always appreciate when a fictional novel can be entertaining while at the same time bringing to light trends and issues from the past, and Georgie's love for birds brings up one of these forgotten issues--the fashion of placing taxidermy birds on women's hats and gowns. I find the idea quite appalling, so I was completely on Georgie's side as she tried to put a dent in the sales of such items. Her ideas on how to stop fashion with "bird parts" were interesting to follow, and never more so than when she butted heads with Luke on the issue.

Now, about Luke/Lucious: simply put, he was a superb character. It was really cool how he actually seemed like two totally different people, depending on what clothes he wore and if he was acting undercover or not. When undercover as Luke he appeared so normal, but his true identity of Lucious was more like the "Jack Bauer" of Texas Rangers, and you just can't deny the coolness of that! Though there were a few times when I wasn't completely on board with his actions, I admit that it did make for entertaining reading, keeping me riveted to the page in anticipation of the outcome!

This story has so much going on that it's impossible to cover it all without giving spoilers... I feel like I've been through so much with these characters, and now that I've finished the book I'm rather sad to be leaving my "friends." (I did notice that Bettina seems like a great candidate for a book of her own, and the epilogue seemed like it could easily be leading up to that. I hope at some point her story will be told!) I'm ashamed to confess that I put off reading "Love on the Line" for quite a while, thinking that it would just be average--but I couldn't have been more wrong. I thoroughly enjoyed the story, and I would highly recommend it to fans of historical fiction! This one is a real winner!

My Rating: 5 stars