Review + Giveaway: Langston’s Daughters

Welcome to my tour stop for Langston’s Daughters by Juliette Harper. This is an adult contemporary mystery that is also very focused on family, small town and ranch life as well as some clean romance. This is the first in the series. It is appropriate for ages 16+.

The tour runs Feb. 23- March 6 with reviews, author interviews, guest posts and excerpts. Check out the tour page for more information.

Title: Langston’s Daughters
Author: Juliette Harper
Publisher: Skye House Publishing
Release Date: December 2014
Length: 156 pages
Series?: The Lockwood Legacy #1
Genre: Contemporary, Mystery

Find the book: Goodreads | Amazon | B&N

Kate, Jenny, and Mandy. Langston Lockwood’s daughters. His tyranny drove them away. His suicide draws them home. They inherit his land, his millions, and his mysteries. Meet the women of the Rocking L and the men who come into their lives. Together, they begin the journey to discover the truth about The Lockwood Legacy. From the pain of the past they find the strength to build a dynasty.

***** Review *****

In spite of herself, Mandy smiled. Her father was a foul-tempered, cantankerous old bastard, but he wore the most beautiful Western hats she’d ever seen.

Kate, Jenny and Mandy Lockwood are all incredible women in their own right. They are drastically different from one another, yet very intuitive and perceptive to one another. Despite their differences in how their relationships went with each of their parents, the three sisters band together after the suicide of their father, Langston.

There’s just one problem. 

None of them believe he committed suicide.

At least not wearing his thousand-dollar Stetson and most definitely not with his favorite gun.

“Something’s not right,” she whispered.

“Exactly, which is why you’re coming home.” 

So she had agreed. To go to Texas. She couldn’t bring herself to call it home.

This thought alone drives Jenny and Mandy home, and all three girls get the surprise of their life at the reading of their daddy’s will. What’s more, each sister is also developing a relationship with a local man. For Kate, it’s high school classmate John Fisk, who also served as her father’s attorney in the months before his death. For Jenny, it’s next door neighbor Josh Baxter, and for Mandy it’s none other than the town major, Joe Bob, or “Just Joe.”

As the novel progresses, more and more is revealed of their father and mother, and it is a heartrending thing to have lived through and witnessed growing up.

“You taught me everything you know, and I learned it all. I’m just not good enough to help you run the place now because I’m not your son.” 

“Keep talking like that and you won’t be my daughter much longer neither.”

“Was anybody mad at him?” 

Kate stared at her slack jawed. “Seriously, Jenny? Daddy pissed people off for the pure pleasure of it.”

“If our Daddy fought the good fight, it was because he started the trouble in the first place.”

“But Mama is buried in town,” Jenny said. “Didn’t he want to be buried next to her?” 

Kate stared at her for a minute, surprised by the lump in her throat. “He left burial instructions at the lawyer’s office to be opened before the will was read. He said he wanted to be here.” 

“What did he really say?” Jenny asked, her voice soft. 

“He wrote, ‘That woman was my hell on earth and I will not spend an eternity beside her.'”

“She was his hell?” Jenny asked indignantly. “He actually said that?” 

“Let it go, Jenny,” Kate said, her voice rough. “I think they were pretty much each other’s hell. Let’s try not to continue the tradition.”

I can imagine perfectly the life that Langston and Irene Lockwood had, as he sounds like my grandfather incarnate. I know exactly how Kate feels in not measuring up to Langston’s standards because she isn’t a son and the tongue lashings she received from the stalwart Langston Lockwood.

Life gets complicated as the girls begin unraveling their father’s last day and as his place of choice, the barn, brings to light some interesting information. The further the girls dig, the more pieces of a convoluted puzzle they uncover. They set their sites on answers, and the one person who can give supply them. Things just don’t go according to their plan…

***** About the Author *****

Juliette Harper is the pen name used by the writing team of Patricia Pauletti and Rana K. Williamson. Like the characters of their debut series, The Lockwood Legacy, Juliette is a merging of their creative energies.

Pauletti, an Easterner of Italian descent, is an accomplished musician with an eye for art and design. Williamson, a Texan from a long line of hardheaded Scots, knows the world of the Lockwoods like the back of her hand.

“We decided to write under a pen name because neither one of us by ourselves could have created Kate, Jenny, Mandy, and their world,” says Pauletti. “Juliette is a little bit of us both. We want to be her when we grow up.”

“Patti teases me that I just don’t want to own up to writing a book with romance in it,” Williamson adds, “but that’s not true. I like the Lockwood women and the way they tackle everything life throws at them. And before we’re done, they’ll be ducking a lot. I imagine coming into the office every day and saying, ‘Okay Juliette, what’s going to happen now?’ She tells us, and we get it down on paper.”

Find the author: Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

***** Giveaway *****

$100 Amazon Gift Card (INT)

Ends 3/11

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This event was organized by CBB Book Promotions.