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Winter Seasons
Determined young Zoe Carrigan travels West, intent on pursuing a dream, but unfortunately for Zoe, three separate, very different men interfere with her plans as each attempts to claim her for his own. Original.
395 pages, Paperback
First published December 1, 1996
22 people want to read
About the author
Sylvie F. Sommerfield
35 books29 followersAka Sylvie Sommerfield.
In 1978, Sylvie Sommerfield's husband challenged her to write a "better" romance novel, than the ones she eagerly devoured. She accepted the challenge. And now the six-time grandmother has written many historical romance novels, which have sold into the millions of copies.
In fact, John Sommerfield had to retire from his successful career as an investment funds manager to run the business side of Sylvie F. Sommerfield Enterprises.
Some of her books, with western themes, all published by Zebra, include Moonlit Magic, Tame My Wild Heart, Captive Embrace, Savage Rapture, Savage Kiss, Wild Wyoming Heart and Autumn Dove.
In 1978, Sylvie Sommerfield's husband challenged her to write a "better" romance novel, than the ones she eagerly devoured. She accepted the challenge. And now the six-time grandmother has written many historical romance novels, which have sold into the millions of copies.
In fact, John Sommerfield had to retire from his successful career as an investment funds manager to run the business side of Sylvie F. Sommerfield Enterprises.
Some of her books, with western themes, all published by Zebra, include Moonlit Magic, Tame My Wild Heart, Captive Embrace, Savage Rapture, Savage Kiss, Wild Wyoming Heart and Autumn Dove.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 5, 2025
My 2025 "Winter" read. The cover and stepback are so beautiful. I had never heard of Sylvie F. Sommerfield before, and was surprised to see her touted as "America's Best Loved Romance Author" on the cover. I think that is a bold claim, but considering the production value of this book with it's foil cover, stepback, and multiple Pino illustrations, she was clearly an author that Leisure wanted to invest some money into. I can't say her book was any good, though!
Book synopsis with spoilers ahead:
This story is set in Colorado and spans a couple of decades in the late 1800s. Heroine Zoe Carrigan had an unhappy childhood under the thumb of her itinerant preacher stepfather. When she turns 18, Zoe and a girlfriend move to Aspen and start new lives using assumed names, eventually they become owners of a successful restaurant.
Zoe has 3 significant romantic interests. The first is Simon, a childhood friend and miner who is involved with the effort to form a mining union. Simon is in love with Zoe, and she is attracted to him, but she doesn't believe in love after her rough childhood and keeps Simon at arm's length although he is her closest friend.
Her second love interest is Brent, the son of a wealthy silver mine owner. Zoe desperately wants to be rich, so when Brent comes to Aspen on his father's business, Zoe immediately sets her sights on marrying him. Brent quickly falls for Zoe's assumed persona of an orphaned socialite named "Laura", but his family foils her plans by cutting Brent off financially when they hear of his marriage. Brent leaves Zoe after a miserable year of marriage and eventually he remarries, but unbeknownst to him, Zoe is pregnant. Zoe is extremely betrayed by Brent's abandonment of her and dedicates her life moving forward to getting her revenge by destroying him.
Her third love interest is Gray, a gentle widower who becomes her business partner after Zoe - now a single mother - is able to save up enough money to try her luck at gold mining. They strike gold, making Zoe filthy rich. Gray and Simon both compete for Zoe's attention, but she can only focus on her need to get revenge on Brent.
Eventually, Zoe is ready to execute her revenge plan. She tricks Brent into investing all of his money into a worthless mine, but unfortunately for Zoe, someone else has already beaten her to the punch of ruining Brent's life. Zoe scamming Brent out of what little money he has left inadvertently gives him the momentum he needs to turn over a new leaf in his life, ironically leaving him better off than he was before. Now that Zoe's dreams of revenge have come to fruition, she finds no satisfaction in them at all. She realizes she's been rejecting both Simon and Gray's love and wasting all of her energy being hateful and miserable. The book ends with Simon and Gray both getting trapped in a mine collapse, but after a harrowing rescue both make it out alive. At the very last moment, Zoe decides Simon is the one she loves, and Gray respectfully bows out.
...
My thoughts:
This is one that I truly should have DNFed, but I don't like abandoning books that I own physical copies of.
Zoe Carrigan might be the worst romance heroine I have read so far. I felt like Zoe was a heroine cast in the Scarlett O'Hara mold, but what works for Scarlett is that she is an anti-hero. It seemed like this author wanted to tap into Scarlett's compelling yet ruthless drive to succeed, but didn't want to risk Zoe being perceived as unlikeable by her readers. So even though Zoe is, IMO, objectively unlikeable - ie. greedy, selfish, vindictive, cartoonishly devoid of empathy, and honestly a little bit dim - the secondary characters are constantly reminding the reader that Zoe is actually wonderful, that her sweet and caring side is just under the surface, and that any minute now she will forget her quest for revenge and her loveable personality is going to come out! I think that the author just needed to commit to Zoe being a bitch instead of trying to justify all of her negative traits. But mostly Zoe just needed something positive about her that a reader could root for. She was practically sociopathic.
The entire crux of the story focuses on Zoe's revenge plot against Brent. This didn't work for me because I don't think Brent's betrayal of Zoe was egregious enough to warrant her dedicating her entire life to destroying him. Yeah, him walking out of their marriage was shitty, but it was also shitty of her to marry him using a false identity and backstory solely to have access to his fortune. Also, he did not know she was pregnant when he left, and she goes out of her way to keep him from knowing about their daughter. Basically, Zoe played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. Brent isn't a great guy, but he also wasn't the villain here - at least from my perspective.
I can kind of excuse unlikeable characters and a bad plot if a book is at least entertaining, but this book was criminally boring. It was almost 400 pages of Simon/Gray having the exact same conversation with Zoe over and over again - begging her to forget about Brent, and her vehemently refusing. A great deal of the story also focuses on Simon's work in organizing a miner's union, which isn't exactly thrilling content in a historical romance. I normally enjoy the drama of a love triangle in HR, but event that was boring in this story because the romance is so tepid and there wasn't an ounce of personality between all 3 of them. Also, Zoe's "choice" of Simon in the end felt random, like she just flipped a coin and decided to pick him.
I will say that the only thing I liked about this book was that it spanned a 23 year period, because I like reading saga-type stories. But mostly I feel bamboozled by the beautiful cover on this book. I think this was my least favorite HR that I've read so far.
Book synopsis with spoilers ahead:
This story is set in Colorado and spans a couple of decades in the late 1800s. Heroine Zoe Carrigan had an unhappy childhood under the thumb of her itinerant preacher stepfather. When she turns 18, Zoe and a girlfriend move to Aspen and start new lives using assumed names, eventually they become owners of a successful restaurant.
Zoe has 3 significant romantic interests. The first is Simon, a childhood friend and miner who is involved with the effort to form a mining union. Simon is in love with Zoe, and she is attracted to him, but she doesn't believe in love after her rough childhood and keeps Simon at arm's length although he is her closest friend.
Her second love interest is Brent, the son of a wealthy silver mine owner. Zoe desperately wants to be rich, so when Brent comes to Aspen on his father's business, Zoe immediately sets her sights on marrying him. Brent quickly falls for Zoe's assumed persona of an orphaned socialite named "Laura", but his family foils her plans by cutting Brent off financially when they hear of his marriage. Brent leaves Zoe after a miserable year of marriage and eventually he remarries, but unbeknownst to him, Zoe is pregnant. Zoe is extremely betrayed by Brent's abandonment of her and dedicates her life moving forward to getting her revenge by destroying him.
Her third love interest is Gray, a gentle widower who becomes her business partner after Zoe - now a single mother - is able to save up enough money to try her luck at gold mining. They strike gold, making Zoe filthy rich. Gray and Simon both compete for Zoe's attention, but she can only focus on her need to get revenge on Brent.
Eventually, Zoe is ready to execute her revenge plan. She tricks Brent into investing all of his money into a worthless mine, but unfortunately for Zoe, someone else has already beaten her to the punch of ruining Brent's life. Zoe scamming Brent out of what little money he has left inadvertently gives him the momentum he needs to turn over a new leaf in his life, ironically leaving him better off than he was before. Now that Zoe's dreams of revenge have come to fruition, she finds no satisfaction in them at all. She realizes she's been rejecting both Simon and Gray's love and wasting all of her energy being hateful and miserable. The book ends with Simon and Gray both getting trapped in a mine collapse, but after a harrowing rescue both make it out alive. At the very last moment, Zoe decides Simon is the one she loves, and Gray respectfully bows out.
...
My thoughts:
This is one that I truly should have DNFed, but I don't like abandoning books that I own physical copies of.
Zoe Carrigan might be the worst romance heroine I have read so far. I felt like Zoe was a heroine cast in the Scarlett O'Hara mold, but what works for Scarlett is that she is an anti-hero. It seemed like this author wanted to tap into Scarlett's compelling yet ruthless drive to succeed, but didn't want to risk Zoe being perceived as unlikeable by her readers. So even though Zoe is, IMO, objectively unlikeable - ie. greedy, selfish, vindictive, cartoonishly devoid of empathy, and honestly a little bit dim - the secondary characters are constantly reminding the reader that Zoe is actually wonderful, that her sweet and caring side is just under the surface, and that any minute now she will forget her quest for revenge and her loveable personality is going to come out! I think that the author just needed to commit to Zoe being a bitch instead of trying to justify all of her negative traits. But mostly Zoe just needed something positive about her that a reader could root for. She was practically sociopathic.
The entire crux of the story focuses on Zoe's revenge plot against Brent. This didn't work for me because I don't think Brent's betrayal of Zoe was egregious enough to warrant her dedicating her entire life to destroying him. Yeah, him walking out of their marriage was shitty, but it was also shitty of her to marry him using a false identity and backstory solely to have access to his fortune. Also, he did not know she was pregnant when he left, and she goes out of her way to keep him from knowing about their daughter. Basically, Zoe played a stupid game and won a stupid prize. Brent isn't a great guy, but he also wasn't the villain here - at least from my perspective.
I can kind of excuse unlikeable characters and a bad plot if a book is at least entertaining, but this book was criminally boring. It was almost 400 pages of Simon/Gray having the exact same conversation with Zoe over and over again - begging her to forget about Brent, and her vehemently refusing. A great deal of the story also focuses on Simon's work in organizing a miner's union, which isn't exactly thrilling content in a historical romance. I normally enjoy the drama of a love triangle in HR, but event that was boring in this story because the romance is so tepid and there wasn't an ounce of personality between all 3 of them. Also, Zoe's "choice" of Simon in the end felt random, like she just flipped a coin and decided to pick him.
I will say that the only thing I liked about this book was that it spanned a 23 year period, because I like reading saga-type stories. But mostly I feel bamboozled by the beautiful cover on this book. I think this was my least favorite HR that I've read so far.
Displaying 1 of 1 review