Review: Reining in the Rancher by Karen Templeton.

Posted June 1, 2009 by Rowena in Discussions | 4 Comments

Rowena’s Review of Reining in the Rancher by Karen Templeton.

Hero: Johnny Griego
Heroine: Thea Benedict
Grade: 4 out of 5

“You’re what?”

Thea Benedict had been about to–honest to God—tell her ex loveer Johnny Griego she was pregnant. Until Johnny’s teenage daughter her to it with her big news!

Thea knew that Johnny wasn’t a happily-ever-after kind of guy. And now he had his little girl’s impeding motherhood to think about. So you could have knocked Thea over when the sexy rancher asked her to be his wife! She should have guessed Johnny was the type to do the right thing by her. Except Thea had some crazy notion about marrying for love…

I read this book yesterday (just in the nick of time) for K Mont’s Year of the Category Reading Challenge. I’m glad that I picked this book up because I enjoyed it. It’s been a long time since I’ve read about a rancher or a cowboy that I actually liked. The last couple of books with ranchers and cowboys made me want to punch someone in the eye because the heroines were too stupid to live. I’m happy to say that this book wasn’t anything like those other books that drove me right up the wall.

This book was a short but definitely a sweet one. I thought that this book did a remarkable job of sucking me in and giving me a few hours of entertainment. I thought that both Thea and Johnny were three dimensional characters that leaped right off the pages. They were solid characters that made me glad to have gotten to know them as I read their story. As short as this story was, I never once felt that there wasn’t enough background to carry this story. I thought Karen Templeton did a fantastic job of writing characters that I fell in love with and a story that I could enjoy.

Thea was a fantastic heroine. A heroine that I was rooting to get her happy ending. She was stubborn as a mule but her reasons for being stubborn were reasons that I totally understood and totally respected. I thought that the way that Thea handled things with Johnny before they got married were kind of iffy at first but as her reasons came to light, I felt that they were the right reasons for holding back. I’m glad that she didn’t fall into the cycle that her mother set for her when she was younger and I’m also extremely glad that the beef between Thea and her mother were squared away and dealt with. It was good to see the example that Thea’s mother set for her all these many years later.

Johnny was your typical man. Completely obtuse when it came to the female sex and totally oblivious to every little thing that should have been obvious but wasn’t. He was a man that I totally connected with and a man that I grew to love over the course of this story. I thought he was a great father to Rachel and there was no doubt in my mind that he was going to be a great father to his baby with Thea. His reasons for fighting the love he had for Thea were understandable and I thought Karen Templeton did a great job of fleshing his character out. I’m glad that he was finally able to let go of the past for good and move on with his future, with a clear and open mind..and also a willing heart. The way he loved Thea was cute and I really enjoyed his character.

Overall, the story was great. It was a fast read that was perfect for what I needed right now. A quick jolt to get me out of the semi-reading slump that I seem to have fallen into. This book was very entertaining, cute to fall into and enjoyable throughout. I definitely recommend this to those Harlequin fans out there because there’s a lot of things to recommend this story. The only blip for me was the way the delivery was written out, it was much too fast and much to tidy for me which left a slight shadow on that part of the story since I said out loud, “Yeah right, having a baby outside of the hospital without any drugs is not this tidy or this quick!” but I didn’t let that part of the story get to me because this is a category book and it was a much shorter story so I let that part slide. Aside from that, this book was enjoyable and I would definitely pimp this to people who like short and sweet. This is the book for you.

This book is available from Silhouette. You can buy it here or here in e-format.