Man of Her Dreams

Quaid Horses #2

by Tami Hoag

From #1 New York Times bestselling author Tami Hoag comes this romance classic about a man in love—and the woman who’s determined to prove it to him…

Maggie McSwain should have been thrilled when Rylan Quaid asked her to marry him. Instead, she was crushed. After all her romantic fantasies, Ry’s proposal was missing one crucial element: love. But Maggie would prove to Ry that he had a heart—and then she’d use every teasing, tempting ounce of seductive power she had to capture it. The next time he proposed to her—and there would be a next time—common sense would be the last thing on his mind.

As far as Ry was concerned, solid partnerships made for lasting marriages—and that’s what he could have with Maggie. Of course he wanted her, as any man with eyes would want her. But he couldn’t love her…because he’d vowed never to fall in love again. Now it seemed that the only way to make her his wife was to use reverse psychology. He’d just retract his proposal—and pretend to be immune to her charms. He had no idea what a challenge that would turn out to be.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Contemporary Romance, Audiobook, Fiction, Adult, Category Romance

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published May 1, 1989

About the author

Tami Hoag is the #1 internationally bestselling author of more than thirty books published in more than thirty languages worldwide, including her latest thrillers—BITTER SEASON, COLD COLD HEART and THE 9TH GIRL. Renowned for combining thrilling plots with character-driven suspense, Hoag first hit the New York Times Bestseller list with NIGHT SINS, and each of her books since has been a bestseller.

She leads a double life in Palm Beach County, Florida where she is also known as a top competitive equestrian in the Olympic discipline of dressage. Other interests include the study of psychology, and mixed martial arts fighting.


Visit her at www.tamihoag.com, Facebook.com/TamiHoag and on Twitter @TamiHoag

Reviews

[Vintage · Rating 2 out of 5]

Shoot me now!

Listened to the CD version.

Incredibly dated romance from Tami Hoag. TH is a pretty good writer in regard to romances and an even better writer when it comes to scaring the pants off of you as well as creeping you out with her suspense/thrillers. Deeper Than the Dead, Ashes to Ashes, and especially The 9th Girl WILL CURL YOUR HAIR! This snoozearama left my hair sad and flat.

The premise is the h has been in love with her best friend's brother since college. He is a great, big, stupid jerk and has no idea. His mother left him when he was a kid and he saw his father mourn... you know the drill. Once upon a time in Romancelandia it was a FRESH IDEA. Maybe even when this was first written. Who knows.

Anyhoo, the H asks the h to marry him 'cause it's time. Kind of reminds me of the scene in Walk the Line when Johnny asks June to marry him because it's time. Her response is sublime...

Well I’m telling you with 100 percent certainty that it is not the time. It’s not about time, it’s not the right time, it’s not even quarter to the right time.

May I review awesome lines from Walk the Line? Here's another great one...

God gave us a great big apple, see, and He said don't touch it. He didn't say touch it once in a while; He didn't say take a nibble when you're hungry; He said don't touch it! Don't think about touchin'it, don't sing about touchin' it, don't *think* about singin' about touchin' it!

Okay, I'll stop.

So, the h flips out because she wants love, and the big doofus just cain't dew it. That's pretty much the gist of the book. The H respects her; he lusts after her; he enjoys spending time with her; he wants her to be the mother of his children; he wants to grow old with her, but he just doesn't know if he loves her. That last part is said in a Shirley Temple voice. What an idiot.

However, Sugah, what dropped my enjoyment even more than the dreadful characterizations of these Virginians is how far off the reservation the narrator got the accents. Being from Texas, I adore accents of all kinds: West Texas, South Carolina, New Jersey, Long Island, Virginia etc. (Okay, I'm leaving east Texas out of it, and if you knew east Texas you'd know why.) There is no one southern accent; there are many.

Soo, when the narrator made the H, a native Virginian who owns a stud farm with a world class jumper, sound like this..




instead of this

I was very frustrated.

[Alison Smith · Rating 1 out of 5]

The was clearly not the book I expected, and I was disappointed. For one thing, I listened to the audio book, and the fake southern accents drove me crazy. For another, the drama was so forced and ridiculous that I found myself saying, "Oh, come ON!!" many, many times throughout the book. The whole thing was stupid - the plot, the way they treated each other, and even the cussing ("Jiminey Creepers" was the best they could do).

Eye roll after eye roll. Don't know what I was thinking.

[Kristy Trauzzi · Rating 1 out of 5]

The only reason I read this book is because I had it. I get a wide variety of books without actually knowing anything about them. Sometimes it's a win - sometimes it's a miss. This book - miss. I'm actually thinking maybe it was aimed at an altogether different target. I get that romance novels are very cheesy. That's the joy of romance novels. But this one wasn't even good cheesy. The whole southern girl and "sugar". If I hear sugar like that again - I will wreck something. To me it felt like one scene repeated 50 times to come up with 100 pages. "Hey sugar" - scowl - "look at her body" - "I will make him mine" - argument. YAY you've read the book. I mean, even when they had the huge fight - I still didn't feel it. Of course you know that they will be together cuz that's how these go. But I didn't feel any suffering. I didn't feel that omg! no! panic that I normally feel. I was like k, just kiss and make up so I can quit this book. Grrr.

[Anita · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ryland owns a horse farm and things are looking really good for him. His prize jumper is going to stud and should earn him a whole lot of money. He thinks it is time to get married and has picked Maggie. He thinks they will be a good fit. Because his experience with Love has been all bad, he wants nothing to do with it.

Magggie has loved Ryland from the moment she laid eyes on him. He is the brother of her best friend. When he proposes, for about 30 seconds she is the happiest woman on the planet. Then she realizes that he said nothing about love. She turns him down, then decides to wage a campaign to win his love.

She is winning the war, then fate throws a nasty at them. They both have misconceptions to overcome in order to find their way back to each other.

Tami Hoag is a great author of romantic suspense and this early romance is a great read that is far more than other works on this genre.

[Lynn · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggie McSwain can't believe that the man she has loved forever, Rylan Quaid, has asked her to marry him because it is the practical thing to do. Ry has sworn off love and has decided that Maggie would make the perfect wife and mother to his children, but he refuses to allow himself to love her. Maggie won't accept anything less than a man who loves her to be her husband, but she knows that Ry is capable of being that man, so she sets out on a mission to get him to admit he loves her before she will agree to marry him.
Typical of category romances of the late 1980s and early 90s, Man of Her Dreams is a quick easy read that has very little in the way of subplots and focuses mainly on the two protagonists and stubborn misunderstandings that could easily have been solved if they had just talked to one another. Having said that, this is still an enjoyable story that would make a good beach read.

[Gail · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice little book. One of those where the heroine is out to prove to the hero that he does too know how to love. It leans toward the light-hearted and lusty. A totally enjoyable bit of fluff set on a jumping and equestrian competition horse farm in Virginia. It took me a minute to change my mental gears, which were expecting Texas or Montana, but it's in the first few pages and I was adjustable. I believe the book was written to be a bit of light enjoyment and it succeeded in its intent. I liked it. Good read.

[Debbe · Rating 2 out of 5]

audiobook Old school so I'll forgive it. "Gosh Almighty Mary Margaret!" Really?!

[Maureen · Rating 5 out of 5]

awesome book

[Barbara Davis · Rating 2 out of 5]

cute

[Tanya · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was a very dated romance. I just couldn't get over the language.

[Linda B · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible. Hokey! The language was ridiculous.

[Tia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maggie has been in love with Rylan since she was a little girl. When her best friend and Rylan's sister got married, Rylan too realized that he was getting old and needed to settle down. Rylan asked Maggie if she'd marry him but did it in such a way, it wasn't even a question. So Maggie threw champagne in his face and stormed off.

After a while of being sad Maggie dusted herself off and decided to seduce Rylan any chance she got. She even flirted with other men to make Rylan jealous and he was terribly! Rylan told Maggie he didn't believe and do love, due to his mama leaving him as a child but Maggie fought hard for him.

When Maggie falls off her horse and gets hurt, Rylan finally admits that he loves her but when tragedy strikes Rylans horse farm, he pushes Maggie away again. Rylan doesn't think that Maggie will love him if he's broke but she never wanted his money in the first place. Will Rylan get it together in time to realize he was destroying himself and Maggie's dream?

The book was nicely written, characters could use a bit of work. The plot wasn't really all that well but it wasn't the worst book ever, it was a pretty decent read.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man of Her Dreams is the 2nd in the Quaid Horses series by Tami Hoag. When Maggie McSwain gets a long desired marriage proposal from Rylan Quaid, the man she's been secretly in love with for 9 years, she had hoped for something better than "I suppose we could just as well get married". In fact, she's so dismayed, she throws her champagne in his face. She wants to marry him, but when he lays out all the practical reasons, she feels the most important one is missing: he has never told her he loves her. But she's seen that he has the capacity to love and is determined that he will realise he loves her, and is prepared to use all her feminine charms to get him to do just that. This romance is funny and sexy. It has horses and dogs and feisty old ladies and gorgeous men and a few very hot sex scenes between Rylan and Maggie. Very enjoyable.

[Elizabeth Meadows · Rating 2 out of 5]

I only listened to this because it was in a box of audio books that I acquired in a lot from a sale. It started out pretty good but I did not enjoy it overall. It was basically about a young woman whose boyfriend asks her to marry him, but only for practical reasons. She does not want to marry him unless he loves her. So she primarily uses sex and sex appeal to try to get him to fall in love with her. This goes against all of the moral principles that I have ever been taught so I did not identify with the characters at all. It was also very steamy and explicit which was a turn-off for me.

[Tess Mertens-Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nothing like a feisty woman to tame a man!
Maggie and Ry and the woman and man. They have know each other for years, and were dating for six months (no sex) and he pops the question at a wedding in a very "if you haven't got anything else going on" kind of way. She lets him have it.
The rest of the book is Maggie being headstrong and Ry being a big dumb guy who can't tell how he feels, and when he tries it comes out wrong.
I enjoyed the banter back and forth and the sex did happen.
In the end, all were happy and love lives on.
AHHHHHHH

[Maura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I almost had to stop in the middle of the book because I couldn't stop laughing whenever our ultra rough, rugged and manly cowboy hero would say "Jeepers cripes!" or "Crimeny!" At one point he got so angry he actually said "Hell and damnation!" At other times I thought this book was beyond ridiculous what with Maggie deciding she's going to make Ryland fall in love with her by wearing sexy clothes (confusing love and lust much?) and Ryland's ridiculous reverse psychology ideas... This is one of Tami Hoag's bad romances. Yup.

[Sir Vicks of Steele · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeepers cripes, y'all. This'un was a quick read. I found this in my friend group's infamous Seximas box. The main character is bratty to a fault, which I thought was fun. Her Viva was strong and the war was won. I found Rylan to be so-so. I wish his reasoning was simpler. There's references to "something that happened" but that's never revealed. Since this Reason was the root of the conflict I found this loose end particularly frustrating. This read was fanfiction level and aggressively okay, so I give it three just fine stars.

[Jeanne · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is one of Tami Hoag's "little" romance novels, written before she started writing suspense thrillers. It was a quick read and predictable. The story is set in the horse country of Virginia, near Charlottesville. Ry and Maggie were likable characters and I loved the two old ladies, particularly the ribald one.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a quick and easy read. Especially since I listened to it. I needed something light to listen too while doing housework and this one fit the bill.

On top of that, it was light enough that I enjoyed it. Sometimes reading a 'fru fru' story with a happy ending just what we all read. I enjoy them for there simplicity.

[Darcy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one was a predictable older romance, but still cute. Ryland the clueless guy, Maggie the woman who knows exactly who she wants. At times there games back and forth were funny, but mostly you wanted to shake both of them and yell at them to grow up. I was happy when the "friend" thing went away.

[Coleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

In an attempt to read more female mystery writers, I saw and bought this book by Tami Hoag. Her name had been referenced as a good mystery author. Unfortunately, this book must have been one of her early books and involved romance. Ugh. Sorry, but despite her decent writing, the story was yukky to me. Althoug obviously it got a good author writing and headed for many years of,success.....

[Wendy · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book seemed to keep missing the mark. Everytime something would happen there seemed to be a let down. I realize this book was written as a Harlaquin type novel, but I feel it truely missed some opportunities.

[Melanie♥ · Rating 2 out of 5]

Two stars for the predictable story.
One star for the narrator's horrible accent. The reader did a good job on the narrative part of the story, but when she did the accents, it made me cringe! I can't believe I listened to the whole thing.

[Kristal · Rating 2 out of 5]

I love Tami Hoag's books, but it was really hard to read this one. If I read "Jeepers cripes" or "sugar" or "Lord" one more time, I was going to throw the book. I'm glad her books have gotten better through out the years since this book and that her sense of character has greatly improved!

[Tammy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I liked this book WAY better than the other recent romance books from her that I've read lately. This main female had a backbone and spunk. The story was interesting. It still went a little long in the "I can't tell her I love her" drama, but better than the previous ones!

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

This story definitely sizzled; I enjoyed all the antics of the main characters as they tried to find ways to convince each other that they should be together. The romance and humor made the story very enjoyable. Definitely recommend to others.

[Felicia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Predictable Harlequin Romance type novel I expected, but (gag) not all the "Well, Sugar" and "Gosh, darn it, Mary Margaret!"(s). I don't care for foul language, but neither do I like the forced sweetness of Southern substitutions.

[Jeanne (love2cook) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good little romance. Maggie McSwain is in love with Rylan Quaid. However, Rylan doesn't want to be in love with anyone or so he thinks. He asks Maggie to marry him, but his proposal didn't have any love with it. Maggie is crushed and determined that he will love her, and ask her again.

[Luz T · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was okay. Her other novels about murder and suspense are better than her romance novels.

[Charlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty standard read.