A touching winter-spring romance amid full Western regalia.
A calculatingly sweet, hard-not-to-like debut set amid the dusty, manly rodeo circuit of Cheyenne, Wyo., by the author of Strip City: A Stripper's Farewell Journey Across America (2001).
Burana tosses in all the elements here for a compelling, one-handed summer sizzler: big-sky country, horny rodeo riders and their roadies—the sexy, easygoing ubiquitous “buckle bunnies” who turn up in skimpy tops and don't mind when their cowboy is married—and lots of beer-swilling in raunchy roadside watering holes that hold Bikini Bull Ride competitions for the regulars. Daryl Heatherly, at 23, a graduate of Colorado State and an aspiring painter with a belly ring and hair to her waist, heads out from Denver, after a nasty breakup from her novelist boyfriend who didn’t appreciate her, and takes off for Cheyenne, where her older brother, Jace, has to ready the family homestead for sale. Their parents divorced years before, leaving Jace, a recovering drug addict and secret homosexual, to keep the horse-farm running. But times are hard, and the rapacious real-estate agent is scratching at the door. Daryl finds a job cleaning rooms at the local Twin Pines motel, and settles back easily into her clutch of good-time girlfriends, like the irrepressible Kimber, divorced with a kid she sends back to her ex for the summer so she can find herself a cowboy. Soon, Daryl finds her own rodeo rider to love: J.W. Jarrett, a compact 41-year-old ex-champion with plenty of buckles and scars to prove it. Divorced, with a young son named Troy, J.W. is struggling honorably to make a living in the relentless Western rodeo circuit, but still lives in the shadow of his more glamorous, successful older brother, Duff Linsey, a cowboy-turned-movie-actor. A love affair grows between the grizzled old cowboy and his sweet girl: He calls her “precious” and she calls him “Daddy.” Burana once again has done her research.
A touching winter-spring romance amid full Western regalia.Pub Date: July 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-312-35505-X
Page Count: 400
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2006
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.
Eleven years ago, he broke her heart. But he doesn’t know why she never forgave him.
Toggling between past and present, two love stories unfold simultaneously. In the first, Macy Sorensen meets and falls in love with the boy next door, Elliot Petropoulos, in the closet of her dad’s vacation home, where they hide out to discuss their favorite books. In the second, Macy is working as a doctor and engaged to a single father, and she hasn’t spoken to Elliot since their breakup. But a chance encounter forces her to confront the truth: what happened to make Macy stop speaking to Elliot? Ultimately, they’re separated not by time or physical remoteness but by emotional distance—Elliot and Macy always kept their relationship casual because they went to different schools. And as a teen, Macy has more to worry about than which girl Elliot is taking to the prom. After losing her mother at a young age, Macy is navigating her teenage years without a female role model, relying on the time-stamped notes her mother left in her father’s care for guidance. In the present day, Macy’s father is dead as well. She throws herself into her work and rarely comes up for air, not even to plan her upcoming wedding. Since Macy is still living with her fiance while grappling with her feelings for Elliot, the flashbacks offer steamy moments, tender revelations, and sweetly awkward confessions while Macy makes peace with her past and decides her future.
With frank language and patient plotting, this gangly teen crush grows into a confident adult love affair.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2801-1
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable...
An unlucky woman finally gets lucky in love on an all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii.
From getting her hand stuck in a claw machine at age 6 to losing her job, Olive Torres has never felt that luck was on her side. But her fortune changes when she scores a free vacation after her identical twin sister and new brother-in-law get food poisoning at their wedding buffet and are too sick to go on their honeymoon. The only catch is that she’ll have to share the honeymoon suite with her least favorite person—Ethan Thomas, the brother of the groom. To make matters worse, Olive’s new boss and Ethan’s ex-girlfriend show up in Hawaii, forcing them both to pretend to be newlyweds so they don’t blow their cover, as their all-inclusive vacation package is nontransferable and in her sister’s name. Plus, Ethan really wants to save face in front of his ex. The story is told almost exclusively from Olive’s point of view, filtering all communication through her cynical lens until Ethan can win her over (and finally have his say in the epilogue). To get to the happily-ever-after, Ethan doesn’t have to prove to Olive that he can be a better man, only that he was never the jerk she thought he was—for instance, when she thought he was judging her for eating cheese curds, maybe he was actually thinking of asking her out. Blending witty banter with healthy adult communication, the fake newlyweds have real chemistry as they talk it out over snorkeling trips, couples massages, and a few too many tropical drinks to get to the truth—that they’re crazy about each other.
Heartfelt and funny, this enemies-to-lovers romance shows that the best things in life are all-inclusive and nontransferable as well as free.Pub Date: May 14, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-2803-5
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: March 2, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2019
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