A Texas Rescue Christmas

by Caro Carson

December 1, 2014 · Harlequin Special Edition

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This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Shana Figueroa. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Short Contemporary Romance category.

Here is Shana Figueroa's review:

Despite its terrible title, A Texas Rescue Christmas isn’t a terrible book. It does too many things right to be awful, but too many things wrong to be good; it’s right in the “meh”-zone.

The book takes place in Texas. There’s a rescue. It’s Christmastime. At first I assumed someone just mashed together three descriptive words and called it a title (I’ve seen worse). It turns out this is the second book in a series focused on the life and times of a group of rescuers in Texas who call themselves Texas Rescue, because the name Rescue Rangers was already taken, I assume.

When I explained the Texas Rescue concept to my husband, he said, “So you mean they’re like Paw Patrol?”

“Yeah,” I replied, “Except in Texas, and with people instead of cute talking dogs. And more sex.”

Hubby: “So it’s Paw Patrol fan fiction?”

SWEET JESUS PLEASE LET THIS BE TRUE.

In any case, neither of the main characters is in Texas Rescue, so even in context it’s still a nonsensical title for the novel. And therein lies a spiritual summary of the book: it’s almost a compelling story, but lots of distracting logical gaps ultimately sink the book.

The story starts out well with a strong narrative that summarizes the main characters’ backstories in a few efficient pages. James “Trey” Waterson is a former high school football star and cowboy who suffered a fall from grace due to an undiagnosed brain injury, and ten years later struggles through daily life with tasks most people find easy. Rebecca Cargill is a society girl who’s been treated like her mother’s accessory her entire life while bouncing from one rich stepdad to another.

I immediately liked Trey and Rebecca. The author does an excellent job showing how Trey’s brain injury affects his everyday life and turns simple tasks like going to the grocery store into major hassles. Rebecca’s POV has an edge of sass, sadness, and self-awareness that makes her instantly likable. I was rooting for Trey and Rebecca to heal each other’s broken hearts and make the beast with two backs as soon was narratively appropriate.

The paths of these two crazy kids cross a few days before Christmas at the wedding of Trey’s brother to Rebecca’s ex-stepsister, on the Waterson family ranch in Texas. Trey goes to support his family; Rebecca goes in a last-minute bid to escape her domineering mother.

Soon after arrival, Rebecca learns the wedding’s been cancelled. Instead of taking her rental car and retreating to the nearest bar to drink her problems away, as any other human being would do, she steals an ATV and drives around the ranch in an ice storm. For hours.

And thusly I experienced my first, “…Wait, what?” moment of illogic that drew me out of the story. I wasted several moments pondering how a sheltered city girl could operate an ATV and have the physical endurance to drive for hours through an ice storm, not to mention why she’d choose to do that rather than take the warm-rental-car/drown-sorrows-in-alcohol option. And did somebody leave the keys in the ATV? Did that person get fired?

Of course, Trey rushes out to rescue her. He finds Rebecca close to hypothermic, takes her to a conveniently nearby cabin, and warms her up with his naked body in a tiny sleeping bag, as you do. Again, I paused to wonder if the old naked-body-rubdown technique is a real treatment for hypothermia or a sexy plot device (Google’s answer: sexy plot device). However, I realize they’ve GOT to get naked in the sleeping bag somehow, and the author throws in enough physio-babble to sell it, so this instance of dubiousness got a pass.

What didn’t get a pass was Trey’s realization that Rebecca is a super special snowflake for whom he might be developing feelings of love, literally a few minutes after meeting her. Of course I knew Trey and Rebecca would fall in love—catatonic stroke victims knew it, for crying out loud—but the speed with which they go from complete strangers to potential life mates was whiplash-inducing. Lust within minutes, yes; love, no. This is when the book started to lose me.

Throughout the story, the passage of distance and time is inconsistent with the characters’ experiences; the weirdness with the ATV was just the beginning. At one point in the story, like a bolt of lightning from a clear sky, Trey realizes for the first time that he has football-related brain damage. Trey is brain damaged, not stupid. If he’s capable of realizing it at all, it would have occurred to him at some earlier time within the last ten years. It’s another non-credible plot device to add drama.

And honestly, there’s not much plot to push along. After Trey saves Rebecca, the story drags as the two lovers agonize endlessly over their feelings and the fake obstacles thrown in their paths. I started the book liking the two main characters, but my affection for them waned as Trey got possessive and Rebecca remained dependent, shifting her neediness from her mother to Trey.

After lots of naked body-rubbing time in a tiny sleeping bag, which is hot, they have sex, which is… anticlimactic (pun intended! I’ll be here all night, folks). Being a big pervert, I prefer my sex on the explicit side, though I understand they can’t all be nipple-twisters. The sex in this book was downright vague, though, to the point where I had trouble telling that they were even having sex. In their first encounter, she gets on top of him, he does his thing (I think), he uses his hand in some way while he’s still inside her (I think), and then she does her thing (I think). Seems like a high degree of difficulty for two people squeezed into a sleeping bag, one of whom is a virgin. It was another “…Wait, what?” moment. Every sex scene was similarly vague and could have been replaced with a sentence that read “And then they had sex.”

Then Trey decides that, since he’s taken her virginity, she’s his now and it’s his duty to protect and provide for her. This was by far, in my opinion, the biggest foul in the book. The belief that a woman’s worth is defined by whether or not her hymen is intact raises my hackles every time, in fiction and real life. I kept waiting for the book to walk back from Trey’s sexist declaration, but it never did. In fact, both Rebecca and Trey pay a lot of lip service to her newfound independence and confidence, but in the end she still lets Trey fight her battles for her and remains dependent on him. I crossed my fingers for a Titanic-like ending, where Rebecca and Trey fight the brutal elements and grow closer through their shared struggle, until in the end he’s forced to sacrifice himself so that she may live (“Never let go, Trey! Never let go!”) and go on to have an independent, fulfilling life packed with adventure. But no. It ends exactly how you expect it to.

That said, the book’s final paragraph was truly touching, so much so that I actually said “Aww” out loud. Probably one of the best last lines of any romance novel I’ve ever read. If only the rest of the book could have been like those final words.