Secrets on the Wind (Pine Ridge Portraits #1) - Stephanie Grace Whitson

For my Kindle Unlimited book this month, I chose a book by an author I'd read before.  In the past, I've read Sixteen Brides, A Claim of Her Own, and A Most Unsuitable Match.  I've had some issues in the past with some of these stories, but I wanted to give this one a shot.

This story follows a few different people.  First off, we're watching Nathan, a sergeant posted at Camp Robinson.  He's out on patrol when he finds a wild woman trapped in a small room under the floor of a home that had been attacked by Indians.  She seems to be out of her mind and tries to take her own life.  Nathan stops her and brings her back to camp.  She survives, but her future is uncertain.

Laina's past is something that she's not proud of.  Ending up in that small room was the culmination of a bad past and bad choices.  Now that she's free, she isn't sure what she's fit for, but she's under the care of Granny Max, a godly woman who shows her the love of God.  Laina starts to believe that she can escape her past and look forward to the future.

Caleb is also trying to escape his past.  He's an angry man who places the blame for things on anyone else but him.  He knows Nathan from years ago, and explains that he's changed his name to try and get away from his past.  He hasn't done anything wrong, but he's not making friends in the camp and ends up in trouble more times than not.  He recognizes Laina from their shared past, and while he doesn't want to cause any trouble for her, he feels like he has a friend.

To me, this book was on the dark side.  There's a lot of deaths in there, and so many things happen to Laina, you're tempted to think she's cursed.  She starts to get over one thing, but then something else happens to her.  I did have an issue with the way the story line goes.  The author leads you to feel the story is going one way, then the ending is different.  I was confused with the way the relationships turned out and the ending felt really rushed to me.

I'm a "happily ever after" reader.  I need a happy ending and resolution for me to say a book is "good."  With this book, there was so much sadness and death, even toward the end, that I'm not sure how I feel about this book overall.  I wanted to like it, but I'm not sure that I did.  There are two more books in this series, Watchers on the Hill and Footprints on the Horizon.  I think the issues with the way this author writes will prevent me from reading the other two.