Holly‘s review of Resisting Mr. Tall, Dark and Texan
Texas is coming to Thunder Canyon!
Hot off the press! Word around town is Ethan Traub—of the Texas Traubs—is bringing the family oil business to Thunder Canyon, along with his sassy personal assistant, Lizzie Landry. Settling down isn’t part of this wealthy bachelor’s game plan. So why are we hearing rumors that he’s starting to see Lizzie as something more than his devoted employee?
Lizzie may be secretly in love with her heart-meltingly handsome boss, but she knows better than anyone that he’s not the marrying kind. Besides, she’s got her own dreams—to hightail it back to Texas to open her own bakery.
But my sources tell me the oil baron won’t let her go so easily.
Stay tuned, faithful readers, to find out if this is one deal Ethan will seal with a kiss!
This was a quick read.
Lizzie has been Ethan’s assistant and housekeeper for 5 years. Now she’s ready to break off and open a bakery (her life long dream). Ethan isn’t happy about it and figures if he tries hard enough he can get her to change her mind. Lizzie doesn’t want to hurt Ethan or leave him in a bind, but she’s got to what she’s got to do.
What I liked: The fact that Ethan and Lizzie were friends first. For the last five years they’ve been BFFNB (Best Friends Forever, No Benefits). They aren’t in love with each other, but they care deeply the way friends do. That means they know each other inside and out. I think it’s important to have that base in a relationship, so their decent into love was believable. They also had great sexual chemistry. Once they noticed each other as man/woman, not just employer/employee or as friends, the tension was really there. Especially since they decided to wait to explore the physical side.
What I didn’t: This book is part of a series set in Montana. The author made sure to let us know it was part of a series, too, by alluding to things that happened in other books, or bringing events over things from the series arc that had nothing to do with the current book. For example: the couple attends the wedding of Ethan’s brother. A tall man shows up at the back of the church and everyone wonders who he is. Then he slips away. Later the bride and groom are talking about it together and someone mentions he’s fallen on hard times. Then it’s dropped. Obviously this is something carried over from their story, or perhaps something that will develop later in the series. But how did that apply to this particular story? There are several other instances where I was pulled out of the story because of hints that were dropped about other things. Nothing frustrates me more when reading a story than feeling like I’m being baited into reading the rest of the series.
I also struggled a bit with the fact that Lizzie was Ethan’s employee until almost the end of the book. Being an assistant is one thing, but she was also his live-in housekeeper. She cooked for him, cleaned up after him, waited on him and organized all his business stuff. That meant he saw her as an employee and treated her accordingly. I think there needed to be more separation so Ethan could see Lizzie as a person away from work.
In the end I believed in them as a couple, but I think the story would have been better served with another degree of separation.
3.75/5
This book is available from Harlequin Special Edition. You can buy it here
The story sounds sweet, but I don’t like the idea of being baited into reading other books in the series.
And I agree with you about the separation thingy.
😀 Thanks for the review.