“The only woman who interests me is you.”
—Russ Palmer, rancher
When Taylor Manning accepts a teaching job in Cougar Point, Montana, she discovers that life there is very different from life in Seattle. So are the men! She soon notices a handsome, opinionated, stubborn rancher named Russ Palmer, and he notices her. In fact, they more than notice each other.… After only a few months, Taylor’s certain of one thing. Despite their conflicting backgrounds, she’d love to be The Cowboy’s Lady.
“I feel as if I’ve been waiting for you all my life.”
—Cody Franklin, sheriff of Custer County
The first day Christy Manning visits her sister, Taylor, she meets Sheriff Cody Franklin. To Christy’s shock—and Cody’s—they’re immediately attracted to each other. Intensely attracted. There’s a problem, though. Christy’s engaged to someone else, someone back in Seattle. So what’s the solution? See what happens when The Sheriff Takes a Wife….
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Sexual Content - 2/5
2/5
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Violence - 0/5
0/5
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Language - 1/5
1/5
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Drugs and Alcohol - 1/5
1/5
Summary
\"3.5 stars overall\" The Cowboy's Lady ¬ The Cowboy's Lady was my first read by Debbie Macomber. I know that Ms. Macomber is a prolific writer who seems to be a romance fan favorite, and the impression of her writing that I had gotten over the years, made me think that I would really enjoy her books. Unfortunately, this initial foray into her work didn't do a whole lot for me. I think this is owing in large part to there not being much to the plot of the story and the character development being weak. The basic gist of things is that the heroine moves from the big city to the back woods of Montana to take a teaching job in an effort to get over her cheating ex¬boyfriend's betrayal. There she meets a stubborn, chauvinistic rancher and becomes a mentor of sorts to his teenage sister for whom he is guardian. The two butt heads constantly over women's issues yet inexplicably fall in love, then after she puts him off for a while, he talks her into a quickie wedding. The end. The other thing that didn't really work for me in this story was the hero. Russ is extremely chauvinistic, harboring very antiquated notions of a woman's place in society, so much so that he felt like a throwback to a much earlier generation. He thinks that women should stay at home and be completely responsible for the housework, cooking and childrearing, and he doesn't think women are suitable to hold public office. He's constantly at odds with his fourteen year old sister about things like makeup, clothes, cheerleading uniforms, and dating. Granted Taylor does get him to lighten up on a few of these things to some extent, but he often put up a fuss getting there and it was never quite enough to make me believe that he'd truly changed by the end. In fact, every time I thought he was making headway, he'd take two steps back by making yet another lame¬brained comment about women which made it very difficult to warm up to him at all. For me, there's also a pretty fine line between an alpha hero laying claim to his heroine and him simply making arrogant assumptions, and in my opinion, Russ definitely had a tendency to step over that line. Additionally, I didn't really care for the jealousy game he played when Taylor stubbornly pushed him away. To me, that was kind of childish. I felt that if he had been emotionally gentler with her to begin with, maybe she wouldn't have felt the need to distance herself from him and would have been more open to communicating. While I don't necessarily consider myself to be a true feminist, I do harbor enough feminist sensibilities that Russ certainly rubbed me the wrong way. However, I suppose there is something to be said for heroes who are the pursuers in a relationship, so readers who enjoy this type of thing or are fans of hard-headed, stubborn alpha males may like him more than I did. Initially, I liked Taylor quite a bit. I loved the way she wasn't afraid to go toe¬to¬toe with Russ when he was being pigheaded, and she was a great buffer between him and his sister, Mandy, almost always eventually getting him to see reason where the girl was concerned. That said though, Taylor inexplicably melts every time he's around which didn't make a lot of sense to me. After growing up with a dad who was just like Russ and with whom she didn't really get along, I'd have been running the other way. Taylor did have a few misgivings, but almost always gave in anyway, until Russ really started putting the pressure on by saying he was in love with her. Then, she started pushing him away which was equally nonsensical to me. Her hesitation seemed to be rooted in what her cheating ex did to her, but I was never sure if she was afraid Russ would cheat on her too, or if she was afraid to trust any man, or what. Whatever Taylor's issues, they didn't last long before she did yet another about face, agreeing to a quickie wedding in Reno which seemed more like an excuse for them to finally have sex, but then disappointingly, all we get is a cut¬scene. I may have liked Taylor in the beginning, but she made a lot of odd decisions along the way that begged for more explanation. I really felt like the author needed to dig much deeper with her characterization for me to fully understand Taylor. When I first started reading The Cowboy's Lady I thought that it was going to be a humorous romance. Some of the butting of heads that Russ and Taylor do early on could be rather funny, but as it continued over and over, the novelty wore off for me and it simply became annoying. I just didn't feel like there was enough reasons given for these two even being attracted to one another, much less falling in love. After all, they were polar opposites with virtually nothing in common which just didn't work well for me. I simply never felt a real love connection between them, so ultimately, this was merely an OK book for me. The Cowboy's Lady introduces the hero and heroine of the second book in the Manning Sisters duet, The Sheriff Takes a Wife. Cody is the local sheriff and best friend to Russ. He's also attracted to Taylor and goes out on one date with her while she's pushing Russ away. His heroine will be Taylor's sister, Christy, with whom Taylor has a latenight phone conversation. Even though The Cowboy's Lady failed to wow me, in the interest of finishing both the series and The Manning Sisters anthology in which I read this story, I'm sure I'll give Cody and Christy's book a try sometime in the near future. The Cowboy's Lady was originally published as a standalone novel in the Silhouette Special Edition line, and was later republished in the single¬author anthology The Manning Sisters along with it's companion book in the series. Star Rating: *** The Sheriff Takes a Wife ¬ The Sheriff Takes a Wife is the second book I've read by Debbie Macomber and the second in The Manning Sisters duet. I liked it quite a bit more than the first book of the series. It is a very sweet story, but it contains some elements that I know won't be very popular with many modern romance readers. Therefore, I know it won't work for everyone, but it worked pretty well for me. In fact, after getting off to a rocky start with this author, The Sheriff Takes a Wife has restored my belief that Debbie Macomber can write the kind of stories that I will enjoy. Christy was a wonderful sister to come all the way from Seattle to the backwoods of Montana to help her sister, Taylor, who is about to give birth to her first child. That's not too surprising though, because Christy is nice to everyone, perhaps a little too nice. She's the consummate 'good girl' who always did what her parents asked of her and never gave them a moment's trouble or worry. She's newly engaged to James, an attorney in the law firm where she works, but the moment she meets Cody, there's an instant spark of chemistry that makes her realize that she never truly loved James and only accepted his proposal because he was a comfortable choice of whom her parents approved. Unfortunately though, Christy is the ultimate people pleaser who doesn't like to rock the boat and can't bear to do anything that might upset someone else even if it means giving up her own happiness, but in the process, she not only hurt herself but ended up hurting Cody too with her wishywashy way of handling things. At first, she doesn't want to break up with James over the phone which was completely understandable. She promised Cody she'd end the engagement and tell her parents about them as soon as she got back to Seattle, but she returns to a surprise engagement party that her mom went to great lengths to plan and her fiancé embroiled in a court case that could make or break his career. A part of me understood why she didn't want to break up with James immediately and tell her parents that the engagement was off, but another part of me felt like she was kind of allowing them to railroad her into it. Of course, the more she allows them to do without telling them the truth, the deeper she buries herself in a horrible mess. There was one point where she decided that she couldn't tell them even if it meant losing Cody, and that really started to call into question in my mind whether she loved Cody enough to make their relationship work. Quite frankly, if Cody hadn't saved the day, I'm not entirely convinced that Christy would have ever broken off her engagement. Like Cody said, if something didn't happen to stop the madness, she'd eventually have ended up married to James and have no idea how she got there, and on some level, I had to agree with him. For that reason, I didn't 1 00% respect Christy even though I understood how difficult it was for her to disappoint someone else. Based on the one date Cody had with Taylor in The Cowboy's Lady, I already knew I liked him. Even though he's best friends with Russ, the hero of that story who I could barely stand, Cody is definitely not the pig¬headed, chauvinistic man that his friend is, for which I was truly grateful. In fact, Cody is a sweet beta hero, because no alpha would have ever stood for all the stuff that Christy put him through. Cody was badly hurt by an exgirlfriend who turned out to be nothing but a con¬artist, and although he wants to be upset with Christy for not initially telling him the truth about being engaged and then not keeping her promise to break things off, he understands her and sees the good in her. In fact, her sweetness and kindness toward others was part of what drew him to her in the first place. Eventually, Cody found a touch of alpha possessiveness and went after Christy to save her from herself and her well¬meaning but overbearing family. Without him doing this, I'm not sure they ever would have succeeded as a couple, because Christy just couldn't seem to say 'no' even though it was tearing her apart to be in love with one man and engaged to another. Cody was a good, honest, honorable man who fell head over heels, madly in love with Christy at first sight and couldn't let her go no matter what lengths he had to go to. As a result, I couldn't help but fall for him. As a couple, Cody and Christy started out by bonding over the birth of her sister's baby. Their attraction to one another is immediate and palpable. Normally, I'm not a big fan of love at first sight, but somehow Ms. Macomber made me really sense Cody and Christy's burgeoning feelings for one another and made me believe they belonged together in spite of her being engaged to another man. They're like a couple of teenagers who can't seem to keep their hands off each other or stop kissing which was really cute. I thought it was very romantic how Cody followed Christy part way out of town when she left Cougar Point, and pulled her over with his sheriff's car to say goodbye one more time before following her the rest of the way to the county line. These two could hardly bear to be apart from one another and that was really sweet. Considering that this is a pretty short book, having them apart for even a short amount of time was difficult, because it didn't leave a lot of time for relationship development. However, the author made excellent use of the time they did have together to show just how crazy in love with each other they are. The only downside to this story other than Christy's seeming inability to stand up for herself was the whole love triangle aspect. This is something I typically have a hard time with, especially when the third wheel isn't a jerk. Both Christy and Taylor repeatedly talk about how nice James is, although Taylor contends that he's boring and not right for Christy. This is somewhat apparent in the fact that he seems to be a workaholic who lacks the sort of passion and ability to express his feelings that Cody displays, but underneath it all, he was a good man who got left out in the cold which is something I always hate to see. Otherwise, The Sheriff Takes a Wife is a really sweet enjoyable story. The madcap race to get Taylor to the hospital to have the baby was a fun way to start the book, and Taylor and Russ play pretty significant roles. Russ still had a tendency to rub me the wrong way, but I liked that Taylor put him in his place when he needed it.;¬) We're also introduced to Taylor and Christy's three brothers, Rich, Paul, and Jason who get their own stories in the spin¬off series, Those Manning Men. Rich is up first in the opening book of that series, Marriage of Inconvenience, and now that I've had a much better experience with Debbie Macomber this time, I'm very much looking forward to reading that book soon. The Sheriff Takes a Wife was originally published as a standalone novel in the Silhouette Special Edition line, and was later republished in the single¬author anthology The Manning Sisters along with it's companion book in the series. Star Rating: **** Review provided by The Hope Chest Reviews (http://www.thcreviews.com)