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B-

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Mina Lobo. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

The summary:

He’s Just The Hired Help…

What kind of cockeyed Pollyanna is Colin Cade working for? Her porch is rotting, her “guest cabin” is cheerless and her land and livestock have only a geriatric cowboy to care for them. Yet Hannah Shaw is positive she can turn her ranch into a successful B and B—and that Colin’s the man to make it happen.

But Colin can’t stick around. He lives with the loss of his family by avoiding the memories, and the way he feels around Hannah and her young son is like a knife to the heart. Trouble is, he’s better at ignoring his own pain than someone else’s, and bright, cheerful Hannah has a heart as haunted as his own. She deserves to be happy—but could she really be with him?

Here is Mina Lobo's review:

My review takes a quasi-newspaper article type format, with each section being worth a point.

Who/Why

Hannah Shaw is a young, attractive widow with an almost-school-aged son, Evan. An orphan who never knew any family of her own, she took the loss of her husband, and then his father, hard. She inherited his family’s ranch and, damn it, she’s going to make a success of that godforsaken thing if it kills her! (And it’s in such horrible shape that it very well could.)

Colin Cade’s a widower who lost his wife and son in a car accident. (There’s a whole lot of Little House on the Prairie-style tragedy in this book, what with all the deaths and whatnot.) He’s in between gigs and winds up at Hannah’s “Silver Linings Ranch” to provide temporary ranch-hand kind of support. (This is not a euphemism.) He’s emotionally closed off, devastated from his losses, and, damn it, not about to open his heart to anybody!

I liked Hannah a lot, possibly because I feel Michaels painted a more nuanced and layered picture of the heroine than of the hero—he seemed more static (and, frankly, a bit boring), to me (whereas I appreciated the heroine’s sometimes goofy sense of humor). Still, both are very likable and it’s easy to empathize with their suffering. Too, though the titular cowboy resists luuuuurve initially, he isn’t ornery about it (for too long), which keeps him from being annoying. Michaels also does a good job of developing Evan’s involvement in the story (and using his character to help the guy and gal draw closer). So I’ll just shave off a quarter of a point for the relative flatness of the hero (also not a euphemism).

What’s Happening and Where

Again, it’s pretty Little House on the Prairie-ish: setting’s a ranch in Colorado that requires a hell of a lot of work (and money). Not having had much experience with ranches, I’d say the author did a good job of painting a realistic picture, though it could also have been more robust. For me, it was like having a thin potato-leek soup: savory but not as hearty as I knew it could be. Minus another .25.

How Things Happen

It’s a predictable plot, and the action’s less action-y and more rebuild-broken-ranch-and-lives-y. It’s cozy, you dig? (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) I cared enough to want to know how exactly things turned out but I didn’t feel anxious when I had to set the book down, all aquiver to get back to it. On the other hand, some of the heroine’s reactions to things were unexpected (her response to her first orgasm with the hero made me LOL), so that was kind of fun. But I think Michaels missed some opportunities to develop the external conflict Hannah faced from her neighbors (who wanted to get hold of her land and hoped their arrogant son would convince her to marry him to aid in that effort). I’ll take off another quarter point for want of more excitement.

WhatTheFuckery

Nothing pissed me off here so no loss of pointage!

Overall Feeling & Final Score/Grade

The thing that made me want to read this was the opening line of the back cover copy: “What kind of cockeyed Pollyanna is Colin Cade working for?” COCKEYED, HAH! It tickled my funny bone and, sure enough, there were bits of humor liberally strewn about. Too, the author wrote some passages that I admired for her style and word choices (didn’t make note of which—admittedly not good of me, my apologies).

I’d thought this would be a sweet romance but there was some sex (albeit perfunctory). I was glad to see Hannah come back to life in that department, eagerly and without guilt (for some reason, I as a single mom felt guilty if I so much as thought of dating when my son was younger, much less getting it on with a fella). It’s a cute read with a satisfying resolution (though I found the very end abrupt and, I hate to say, trite—so much so that I frowned at the book as I read the last line, so I’m deducting another quarter of a point). That leaves “Her Cowboy Hero” with 4 out of 5 possible points or a grade of B minus.