Review of One Good Cowboy by Catherine Mann

One Good Cowboy (Diamonds in the Rough #1)

by Catherine Mann

Genre: Contemporary Romance/Category Romance/Cowboys/Animal Rescue

Age category: Adult

Release Date: April 1, 2014

Blurb:

From Ex to Eternity?

To inherit his family's empire, Texas cowboy-turned-CEO Stone McNair must prove he has a heart beneath his ruthlessly suave exterior. His trial? Finding homes for his grandmother's rescue dogs. His judge? Johanna Fletcher, the woman whose heart he broke.

Sure, Johanna can handle a week traveling the country with her ex-fiancé to fulfill his dying grandmother's request. She and Stone want different things—plain and simple. But there's nothing plain about Stone, or simple about the heat that still flares between them. One week may not be long enough….

You can find One Good Cowboy on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18774824-one-good-cowboy?ac=1   

You can buy One Good Cowboy here:

- Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00FTQ1VH6/ref=cm_sw_r_tw_dp_bFmctb01SMAV8

- Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/one-good-cowboy-catherine-mann/1117057012?ean=9780373733064    

- Kobo: http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/one-good-cowboy-1

- Harlequin: http://www.harlequin.com/storeitem.html?iid=51415   

About the Author:

USA Today bestseller Catherine Mann and RITA Award winner, Catherine writes contemporary romance for Berkley, Harlequin, and Sourcebooks, With over two million books in print in more than twenty countries, she has also celebrated five RITA finals, three Maggie Award of Excellence finals and a Bookseller’s Best win. A former theater school director and university instructor, she holds a Master’s degree in Theater from UNC-Greensboro and a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts: Theater (with minors in both English and Education) from the College of Charleston. Catherine and her flyboy husband live on the Florida coast where they brought up their 4 children – and still have 5 four-legged, furry “children” (aka pets). Catherine is an active volunteer with her local Humane Society, serving on their Board of Directors and fostering puppies and special needs dogs (she stopped counting at a hundred). She recently checked off a major item on her “bucket list” by completing the hands-on training for the Florida State Animal Rescue Coalition. Catherine enjoys hearing from her readers and can be found online daily.  To receive an autographed bookmark, send a SASE to: P.O. Box 6065, Navarre, FL 32566

You can find and contact Catherine here:

- Website: http://www.catherinemann.com/

- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CatherineMannAuthor

- Twitter: https://twitter.com/catherinemann1

- Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/93454.Catherine_Mann

- Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/catherinemann/

- Blog: http://www.catherinemann.com/category/blog/

- Newsletter: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/CatherineMann_News/

I received a free copy of One Good Cowboy by Catherine Mann in exchange for an honest review, which was pretty exciting for me since this was my first time being a given a book to review.  The blurb really grabbed my attention when it mentioned finding homes for rescue dogs.  As someone involved in animal rescue, I decided it was a book I definitely wanted to read.

Overall, I enjoyed One Good Cowboy.  I’m giving it three stars out of five, which means I liked it.  There were a few things I didn’t love about it, so I’ll start with the negative and end with the positive.  That’s just how I like to do things.

The negative:  The names of the characters and pets pretty much drove me insane.  Stone McNair’s grandmother is a billionaire and the founder of a jewelry company, Diamonds In The Rough.  The family also owns and operates the Hidden Gem Ranch.  There’s definitely a jewelry/precious stone connection there, but in case you miss that somehow EVERY single pet has some kind of jewel/precious metal name.  The dogs are Sterling, Gem, Pearl, and Ruby.  The horses mentioned by name have names like Goldie and Opal.   Then there’s Stone.  His cousins are Amethyst and Alexandrite.  It just seemed like a lot of overkill to me. 

There also seemed to be some overkill in letting you know just how wealthy the McNairs are; the private jet, the insanely famous and wealthy social circle, and the ability to just buy all new clothes and accessories in the middle of a trip.  Once again, it seemed like overkill by the end.

I know neither of those things are very big deals, and it’s probably just me, but that’s how I felt.

The positive:  First and foremost, the fact that the book essentially starts off with a dying woman’s wish to see her rescue dogs placed in good homes.  You had me at rescue dogs OR being responsible enough to make sure there’s a plan in place for pets in the event of their owner’s death.  Both?  I’m definitely in.  This was the first time I’ve read a romance with any kind of animal rescue connection, and I just love that being added in as a subgenre.

I liked Stone and Johanna, and I liked them together.  They had broken off their engagement several months before due in large part to a lack of trust, communication, and a lack of compromise.  The week together with the dogs placed them in close proximity to one another and more or less forced them to acknowledge and resolve their issues.

There was definite heat between the two of them, they just both seemed to get caught up in the picture of how they wanted things to be, and didn’t really give much thought to where the other person was coming from. 

The issues they faced seemed pretty realistic for the most part; children or no children, how and with whom they socialized, total (or lack thereof) honesty, and how much each was willing to give to make a life together.  I enjoyed the give and take between the two of them to come to a workable solution, and definitely felt like they were a couple I wanted to see make it.

This was my first time reading Catherine Mann, and I think I’ll definitely give some of her other books a try.  What about you?  Have you read any of her books?  

Review of A Night Like This by Julia Quinn

The very short version of this review would be “Where have the Julia Quinn books been all of my life?”  But I feel like I need a little more than that to call it a review (or a blog post), so here’s the slightly longer version (I’m not going to waste too much of your time with a long review because you really need to read the book).

I read A Night Like This as part of the Historical Romance Reading Challenge hosted by Anna at Herding Cats & Burning Soup.  I also first heard about the book when she reviewed it on her blog (thanks, Anna!). It’s a cute, quirky, happy read.  Anne Wynter is a governess with a past, her charges are hilarious, and their cousin, Daniel Smythe-Smith (Anne’s love interest), is an all-around great hero.  

A Night Like This has a great cast of characters.  The secondary characters are more than just fillers because the main characters have to interact with someone else; they’re interesting on their own.  (Apparently some of the secondary characters have their own books, and I can’t wait to read those as well.)  It was also nice to read a romance that had some humor woven in.  The girls in Anne’s charge are hilarious, and there’s a good bit of banter back and forth between Anne and Daniel that really adds to the story.

I used to read historical romance novels almost exclusively, but I started to feel like so many authors just recycled the same stories over and over – boy meets girl, they’re of different social classes so don’t think they can be together, blah, blah, blah, then it all works out in the end, so I took a long break from reading them.  A Night Like This is enough to restore my faith in historical romance authors, though.  How many books feature historical romance, really bad musicians, a run-down of the fates of Henry VIII’s wives, unicorns, and attempted murder? 

Review of The Trouble With Being A Duke by Sophie Barnes

I read The Trouble With Being A Duke by Sophie Barnes as part of the historical romance reading challenge I’ve signed up for.  My goal is to read, and review, 15 historical romance novels this year.  I’m pretty sure I’m already a little bit behind, but that’s just life.

I didn’t love The Trouble With Being A Duke.  I gave it two stars on goodreads, which means it was okay.  It just didn’t grab my attention.  I finished reading about four other books while I was working my way through this one, which is never a good sign for me. 

The book starts off really, really slow.  The first several chapters are devoted to telling you about a ball, describing the ball, describing what people are wearing at the ball, and establishing the fact (over and over, in case you manage to forget in a few pages) that the Duke is a reformed rake.  It takes quite a while for much to happen that really grabs your attention, and even then it's really just mediocre.  

It really felt like it could have made a good novella, but the decision was made to turn into a novel, so there are a lot of what seem to be filler pages.  And a lot of harping on the fact that the Duke is a reformed rake. 

I haven’t read anything else by Sophie Barnes, so I don’t have a good point of reference for whether or not most of her books are more interesting and feel less like reading a lot of filler material.  Many of them are reviewed well, so I may give another one a try, though most likely not another one from this series. 

Have you read this book, or any other books by Sophie Barnes?  Any suggestions for one that doesn’t drag?

Review of Someone Else’s Love Story

***Spoiler and Soapbox Alert.***

This review definitely contains spoilers, and I’m climbing up onto a soapbox in order to deliver it.  There, you’ve been warned.

I don’t usually review many books on my blog or on goodreads.  I don’t normally care to spend the time, especially when it seems like I’m not the best at writing reviews, and there are plenty of other people out there who are really good at writing reviews.  Sometimes, though, I just feel like I have to write a review.

I’ve loved most of Joshilyn Jackson’s books.  She writes the south well, without relying on stereotypes, and she normally writes strong, flawed, just plain real female characters.  So of course I put her latest novel, Someone Else’s Love Story, on my Christmas wish list, and dropped a few not so subtle hints to Nick that it was one of the things I really, really wanted.  He picked up on my hints and I found it waiting for me under the tree on Christmas. 

The book is terrible.  I gave it one star on goodreads, which means “I didn’t like it.”  I have two major issues with this book:  It crams religion down your throat, and it excuses rape.

The book harps, incessantly, on a virgin birth, the resurrection, and various other religious tenets.  I’m not saying that a book can’t have some religion.  Characters need to care about something, and they need to stand for something.  Sometimes that something is a religious belief.  I get it, and I’m fine with that. 

I’m not fine with a book that’s dressed up as fiction trying to cram a certain belief and value system down its readers’ throats.  It’s fiction, it’s meant to entertain, not to convert.  If you want to explain the beauty, absolute rightness, or perfection of a certain belief or value system, then write a non-fiction book on that subject.  Don’t use your status as a best selling author to get people to unsuspectingly buy “fiction” with a motive like that.  It just comes across to me as cheating. 

My biggest issue with this book, however, the one that honestly made me feel somehow dirty for having read it, is the way it addresses rape.  The main character, Shandi Pierce, conceived her son when she was raped at a college frat party.  She was drugged and didn’t remember much from the night it happened, and chooses not to come to terms with any of it until her son is three years old.

The book harps, incessantly, on the fact that Shandi was still technically a virgin, even after the birth of her son because her hymen was still intact, and her rapist was apparently a premature ejaculator who “didn’t get it in all the way”.  I am no medical expert, so I have no idea if that is even medically possible.  The constant harping on her being technically a virgin, even after giving birth, was just disturbing.

Shandi spends the first three years after her son’s birth being pretty much a-okay with the fact that she was raped.  She loves her son, and after all, she’s still technically a virgin. All’s well that ends well, apparently. 

She never contacts law enforcement, and very, very few people know the circumstances surrounding her son’s conception.  That part doesn’t bother me.  Rape is extremely under reported.  I don’t think it’s at all unreasonable to go with the fact that a 17 year old girl who is drugged and raped at a party wouldn’t go to the police. 

What bothers me so much is that she was mostly okay with having been raped for over three years after the fact.  All because she loved her son and her hymen was intact.  I applaud her for loving a child who was conceived so horribly, but that doesn’t make the act that caused him to be conceived okay at all.

When Shandi finally decides that she does want to know who raped her, and tries to fill in the details of the night it happened, she enlists the help of an emotionally stunted geneticist, and together they determine the identity of her son’s father – her rapist. 

They never contact law enforcement.  On one hand, I understand the rationale.  It has been years, it’s basically her word against his, and she doesn’t want her son to find out that he’s the product of a rape.  I don’t necessarily agree with that decision, but it seems like a decision that could be seen as good by someone in that position.

It’s what follows that I think is beyond upsetting. 

Shandi meets and talks to her rapist and his fiancé.  His story, which she decides to believe, is that they were both at a frat party, and he had (sort of against his will) had beer funneled into him, so got really drunk, really fast.  He didn’t give her the date rape drug.  He found her talking with three other guys, who most likely had given her the drug, as they were getting ready to take her upstairs (presumably for a long evening of gang rape).  She grabs and kisses him (she decides during his version of events that it’s because he looks like her best friend who she is secretly in love with), and the two split off from the group.  Apparently Shandi takes off her underwear at some point, and even though she can barely walk and isn’t forming coherent sentences, the rapist decides this means she wants sex.

They go outside and she passes out, and he rapes her (though apparently it doesn’t really count, because even though she gets pregnant, her hymen is still intact).  She wakes up, sick and confused, and calls her best friend to come pick her up.  Then she proceeds to live the next three plus years basically denying the fact that she was raped.

When Shandi and her rapist (and his fiancé) piece together the events of the night, she basically decides that the rapist isn’t a bad guy, and isn’t really exactly a rapist.  After all (according to his story) he most likely “saved” her from gang rape, he didn’t give her the drug, he was drunk, and he was really socially awkward, possibly autistic, so it wasn’t really his fault.  In fact, he’s practically a victim too.

That’s when I started to see red.  He didn’t “save” her from the three guys.  He just raped her himself instead.  He basically beat them to it.  If he had saved her, he would have removed her from the situation, possibly contacted law enforcement, or a responsible adult, or at least tried to leave her in a safe place.  He didn’t do any of that.  He took a girl who couldn’t form a coherent sentence and could barely walk, outside and raped her.  That’s not saving her. It’s just sick and disturbed that there’s any suggestion that one kind of rape is somehow “better” than another and saves the victim from a worse one.

It doesn’t matter that he didn’t give her the drug.  He still took advantage of what the drug did to her.  Under that logic it would be alright for medical professionals to rape patients in comas – they didn’t put them in the coma after all.  Using someone’s physical or mental incapacitation for non-consensual sex is just wrong.  It doesn’t matter if you didn’t cause the incapacitation; you still don’t have the right to take advantage of someone in that state.

Being socially awkward, or even autistic, is not an excuse for rape.  I don’t see that as being much different than saying someone asked for it.  You’re excusing rape by saying the rapist couldn’t help it, much the way that society often blames women in saying that they asked for it by their dress or behavior.  “Well, she dressed that way so he couldn’t help himself” doesn’t seem much different to me than “Well, he’s socially awkward, so he couldn’t help himself”.  That’s not an excuse.

I just can’t like a book that paints rape as an okay or blameless thing.  It isn’t, and there’s no way to dress it up and make it okay.  I also think it’s really upsetting how many women have given this book gushing reviews. I think there’d be an outcry for tarring and feathering if a man had written this book. 

So what about you?  Have you read the book?  If so, what did you think?  Does rape being portrayed as anything other than horrible upset you?  Want to climb up on your own soapbox? 

When the Author Comments On Your Less Than Glowing Review

I don’t review very many books at all.  I read a lot of books and I will almost always rate them on goodreads, but I rarely take the time to write any sort of review.  Part of it is laziness on my part.  I read the book, I rate the book (and make sure it’s added to my books read this year on goodreads because, yes, it matters more than it should to me to reach my goal), and then usually move on to the next book.  I also don’t think reviewing books is necessarily my gift; other people write much more interesting reviews than I typically do, so I usually leave it to them.  Persistence is my gift, so if I read a book that I just know a friend or family member will love I usually just hound them until they read it in an effort to make me go away quietly.  In my defense, they usually like the book.

All of that being said, once in a while I do review a book on goodreads.  There’s not much of a system to my deciding which ones to actually write a review of, but it’s usually for a book that wasn’t what I expected (good or bad) or a case where I thought my rating needed an explanation of sorts. 

Last year hubby and I were in a cookbook book club, and I reviewed a few of the cookbooks we used.  I gave one of them a less than stellar review. 

Now, I’d like to take a moment to throw something out there about books read in any sort of book club.  I’ve noticed that the reactions to the books tend to be strong.  It makes sense to me.  You have a group of people choosing books for the whole group to read; not everyone is going to love every book they read, especially if it’s a book they might not have chosen on their own.  The other side of that is that sometimes you come across an unexpected treasure – a book you never would have picked up on your own, but one that you absolutely love.  So it makes sense to me that the ratings for book club books might not be very middle of the road since it can easily be a book your felt forced to read, or a book you never would have found, but totally rocked your world.  Has anyone else noticed this?

Back to my less than stellar review.  I gave the book two stars, which on goodreads means “it was okay”.  Here’s my review:

I bought this cookbook because it was the one being used for a cookbook book club, otherwise, I probably wouldn't have bought it. I thought it was somewhat over-priced in the grand scheme of available cookbooks. All of the recipes that I made, or tried, were very, very good. However, I have two major issues with this cookbook.

The first problem is with the book itself; it was not designed as a cookbook, it was designed more along the lines of a coffee table book. It's very pretty to look at, but an absolute pain to use. The book doesn't lay flat and the shape is very awkward. It's extremely difficult to follow a recipe when the cookbook won't stay open. I finally ended up copying the last recipe I made, just to have an easier time using it. It seems silly to have to make a copy for yourself from a cookbook you own. There are also some typos in the book. I know that's not a huge deal, but it's not something I was expecting to find in an over-priced cookbook.

The second problem is with the actual recipes; while they are delicious, they're not always very practical for cooking at home. Some of the quantities are basically insane to make at home. It seems like they just put the cafe recipes in the book and didn't reduce or adapt them for cooking at home, even though it's sold as a home cookbook. Sure, sometimes you do need a dish or dessert to feed 10 - 20 people, but not that often. Quite a few of the recipes in this cookbook leave you with much more food than you can possibly consume at home. They don't really seem to lend themselves to being halved either. I also thought that the cookbook doesn't always take into consideration what is available in the average home kitchen; quite a few of the recipes call for unusual sized pans, a standing mixer, food processor, etc. It just seems like some of the kitchen tools it assumed you will have aren't necessarily standard.

Overall, I can't say that this will ever become one of my "go-to" cookbooks. It's just not a good format for someone who actually intends to use it, not just decorate with it, and for the money, there are definitely better cookbooks available.

And now, here’s the author’s recently posted comment:

Thanks for your comments Danielle! The book is a very creative book, where many of the recipes were pulled from my restaurant days. ALthough, I am not the only book that has large quantity recipes. Ina Garten and The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook are very similar her recipes.
I agree totally on the cover of the book, but people also love the look of the book. I am working on changing the cover.
Thank you so much for your comments, they all help!!!

I’ll be honest, I thought it was a little weird.  I don’t think my review was scathing.  It was my honest opinion, and I tried to explain why I didn’t like the cookbook instead of just saying I think there are better cookbooks out there.  I didn’t post anything at all on the author’s website.  I just reviewed the book on goodreads. 

I don’t think the author’s comment is really that bad, but I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate either.  Maybe it’s just me, but it has the feel of having been fired off in a hurry, which is usually a bad idea.  It also seems like it’s aimed at changing my mind when she points to another cookbook that has something I said I didn’t like about hers.  Furthermore, my review was for a finished cookbook, not an advance copy or any sort of pre-release, so I don’t think the part about changing the cover was especially relevant.  That’s how it was published, so I think she needs to deal with the fact that at least one reviewer didn’t like it.

I won’t say that the author’s comment has put me off buying her next cookbook because I probably wouldn’t have anyway based on the first one, but it definitely didn’t make me likely to re-think that decision.  I stand by my review.

I’m just not sure how appropriate it is for authors to comment on reviews like that.  I’ve heard of authors not reading reviews of their work for fear of responding inappropriately.  I can’t help wondering if that’s a better choice than responding even a little defensively to a less than glowing review. 

So what are your thoughts on the author commenting on a less than glowing review?  Have you had an author comment on any of your reviews?