RITA Reader Challenge Review

Baby It’s You by Jane Graves

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Stacey aka nystacey. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Long Contemporary category.

The summary:

With only the wedding dress on her back and her honeymoon luggage in the car, Kari Worthington is running away. Determined to put her controlling father, her rigidly structured life, and the uptight groom she left at the altar in her rearview mirror, she escapes to the Texas Hill country . . . and lands on a tall, dark, and gorgeous winery owner’s doorstep. All she needs is a job and a place to live until she can get back on her feet. So why is she fantasizing about losing herself in his powerful arms?

For Marc Cordero, freedom is so close he can taste it. He’s devoted his life to managing the family business and being a single dad. Now with his daughter away at college and his brother taking over the winery, Marc is ready to hop on his Harley for parts unknown-until a runaway bride bursts onto the scene. Free-spirited and tantalizingly sexy, Kari excites him like no other woman has before. But when irresistible passion turns into something more, will Marc give up his future to take a chance on love?

Here is Stacey aka nystacey's review:

I adore Jane Graves.  I loved the first book in her Rainbow Valley series.  Her characters walk off the page, and her style of writing puts me in the center of her stories.   It’s why I gravitated towards writing this piece in the first place.

I also know that it’s hard to pull together a series, especially one with the kind of cool and quirky concept like the one the Rainbow Valley series is based on. For those who haven’t read the series, Rainbow Valley is a small town founded in a location the founder believed was the real Rainbow Valley (which is pet heaven if people don’t know).

In the first book, Cowboy Take  Me Away, she was able to write a story that worked beautifully with that concept.  The town’s pets were living characters in their own right, bringing their excitement and enthusiasm to the story of a bull rider and his childhood sweetheart, who’s working for the town Animal Shelter, in a way that made it better.

Unfortunately, not every book is going to fit a concept perfectly; for every single well written passage, there will be one that gives a reader the kind of confusion capable of removing them from the story.  Baby it’s You has one of those moments of confusion, and it takes place at the very beginning of the book.

For me as a reader expecting the best, it’s painful.  Especially considering how beautiful the rest of the book is.  That Jane Graves magic practically sparkles in a story about a runaway bride who finds herself(both literally and figuratively) in a small town.  It’s also a story about a guy who dreams of running away after feeling shackled by his various obligations, and yet discovers that home is really in this town.

Yet in a story that’s so much about people, their lives and their hearts, the pets are made to feel like accessories, tacked on for the sake of the story concept.  Especially and including the tiny dog that is returned to our lovely heroine with the rest of her belongings.

I wanted to read more about the hero and the heroine, and the hero’s family, and the wonderfully quirky people in the small town this book is set in.  As a result, I found myself trying to read past the interactions with the pets that seemed to turn up everywhere to find the ‘good stuff’, aka the human interaction.

This definitely isn’t the last Jane Graves book I’m going to read, but this is the first I’ll say that wasn’t for me.

Because I loved so much else about this book, I’m giving it a C.

This book is available from:
  • Available at Amazon
  • Order this book from apple books

  • Order this book from Kobo
  • Order this book from Google Play
  • Order this book from Audible

As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
We also may use affiliate links in our posts, as well. Thanks!

Baby, It’s You by Jane Graves

View Book Info Page

Add Your Comment →

  1. Amanda says:

    I know this comment is a month late, but I just finished the book, and I’m dying to know what the confusing passage was!

Add Your Comment

Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*


This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

↑ Back to Top