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Falling by Stobie Piel is a time travel romance. The hero, Adrian
de Vargas, and the heroine, Cora Talmadge, fell in love at 19. But
Cora never felt like she was good enough for Adrian who she saw as perfect.
There didn’t seem to be anything he couldn’t do or wasn’t good at.
She felt like she was always disappointing him. So she left him the
day before he was going to ask her to marry him.
The
only thing Adrian didn’t have in life that he wanted was Cora, the woman
he had loved and lost. So when he met Jenny, Cora’s friend who wanted
to take Cora skydiving, at his skydiving school (which was named for Cora)
it gave him the opportunity to try to get Cora back. Cora didn’t
want or really plan to actually skydive. But when Adrian (who she
hadn’t seen since the day she left him) got on the plane as her guide she
knew she couldn’t back out in front of him. During the dive something
goes wrong and they are caught in a whirlwind and sent back in time to
1869 Arizona.
A
time in which Cora is able to grow and change as a person and discover
who she is and see Adrian as a man, not something so perfect that she isn’t
good enough for. But the man that she loves and who loves her,
and whom she needs and needs her. In some ways she starts to
see herself in Adrian and she thinks of him as a cracked egg who needs
her (I didn’t like the cracked egg business).
Adrian
discovers his true heritage. His father Tiotonawen (Whirlwind) of
the Tonto Apaches sent his four-month-old baby, Adrian, to the future to
keep him from dying. (Adrian had been adopted into a good and
loving home.) So Adrian finds he’s ¼ Apache, ¼ Mexican,
and ½ Navajo. So he figures in the past he can keep
Cora with him (as a captive if necessary) to where he lost her in the future.
There
are a lot of great and funny scenes in this book. Especially the
first part with the skydiving, they’re discovering that they’ve gone back
in time and living in an Indian Village (where men are treated superiors,
as in getting to eat first). Cora, who had no confidence in herself,
ends up taking a gun away from a boy and a man and taking an Apache Chief’s
(Adrian’s father, who becomes weary of her) hat to protect her from the
sun. You see her grow and become confident in herself.
The love between Adrian and Cora is great. They have both loved each
other all along and want to be together. Cora tells Adrian why she
left and their relationship starts again. There are some great love
scenes and two very sensual dance scenes.
In
general it’s a really good story. But for me, I felt like it concentrated
too much on Cora. Although the stuff with her was good, and Adrian’s
father tells him at the end of the book that they came back in time for
Cora. I felt like Adrian got pushed to the back burner so to speak
for Cora to grow, which was needed. I just simply wanted more of
Adrian. When he was given the chance he came off very sexy.
Sheila Bragg /
August, 1999
Copyright
© 1999 for Paranormal
Romance Reviews
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