Love on the Line - review

I guess it would be showing my age to admit that my family had a party-line phone way back in the Dark Ages of the 1980s when my husband and I were engaged. Actually, party-lines weren't around much any more by then, but we lived in a rural area of the Ozarks where that was the only option for a telephone. And, of course, my "fiance" and I spent way more time on the telephone than we should have, considering the cost of long-distance in those days. We would get so irritated at the neighbors picking up the phone to see if we were through talking yet. Poor neighbors!

I was reminded of that experience when I read Love on the Line by Deeanne Gist. Set in the early 19-aughts in a small town where only a few people had a telephone and everybody was on the same party line, I found it to be a very entertaining and well-researched story. I loved learning more about how the early switchboards operated and how all the calls had to go through Central. I think I would have enjoyed being a telephone operator, like our heroine, if I had lived back in those days. I wasn't real crazy about her obsession with birds, but it did add an interesting sub-plot to the story. It was a fun, light read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Here's the publisher's 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.

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Thank you to Litfuse Publicity Group for sending me a review copy.