Locked in confusion

Lawked Flame by 

This book needed a prolouge and and editor.

I was so confused by the aliens and their small town that I got lost in the "action" sequences. I was so fed up that I stopped reading this book altogether. The last straw for me? There was a sequence involving the heroine's mother becoming ill; too much time was spent on the sequence and the character explaining to her lover that her mother was white with a fierce mothering instinct, as if race plays a part in that. For me this stalled the story; as did the side plotlines that did nothing to move the main story along.