Review: The Rancher and the City Girl

Title: The Rancher and the City Girl
Author: Joya Ryan
Series: Tempting the Rancher #1
Genre: Hot Contemporary
Length: Short novel
Available: 12th June

Rancher and single father Tripp Montgomery is a master at French braiding and princess tea parties. He’s also the most eligible bachelor in Cheyenne, Wyoming. So when he stumbles upon a flashy, sexy city girl, he knows two things: 1) she’s a walking disaster, and 2) he needs to stay far, far away.

But she needs him more than he wants to admit…

Charlotte Gram knows what it’s like not to be wanted. She’s in Cheyenne for the summer to help her grandmother heal after surgery, but the farmhouse “chores” are proving much harder than she thought. If her day couldn’t get any worse, the sexiest man she’s ever seen strolls up to save the day…

…and he definitely doesn’t seem happy about it.

Source: ARC from Entangled: Brazen

This was a quick, cute read with a hot twist that will please fans of cowboy romances. Tripp and his three friends have a lot of sexy potential and when you throw in a cute kid, what’s not to love?

Well, a bit more detail might have been nice. Charlotte has never lived in the country, yet she takes to running a farm single-handed without much instruction incredibly well. She has one day of not doing so great, but once she buys the right jeans and gets a decent pair of boots, she is well away. A little bit more on her struggles wouldn’t have gone amiss.

I was also left curious about the set up in Tripp’s house. It seems like he owns the ranch, but his best friends live and work with him. Do they have any stake in the business? Why are they living with him? Don’t any of them wish for their own space?

These little niggles aside, the story itself is familiar. Tripp is a sexy single dad much chased by single mothers in the area. Charlotte is an out-of-towner passing through. They meet, they have chemistry, everything is scorching. Then it turns out she’s not passing through quite as quickly as Tripp expected and there follows a lot of grumpy rancher and hot encounters. Which is fun, even if Tripp does need an attitude adjustment at times.

Then there’s Gracie, the cute little kid, who hasn’t got a mother and gravitates to any woman she meets. Tripp is understandably protective of her, especially when Charlotte isn’t planning on sticking around. Which made Charlotte’s behaviour kind of infuriating. She is willfully obtuse when it comes Tripp’s reluctance to let her near his daughter. No, she doesn’t have much experience with kids, but the fact she herself was abandoned by one parent and raised badly by the other should have clued her in as to why Tripp was the way he was. Instead she acts all hurt, because Tripp’s so mean and doesn’t want to bring her into his life for a few weeks before she goes back to her normal life.

So, yeah, it wasn’t perfect, a little too light on details and reasoning for certain emotional shifts for me. However, if you’re just looking for a short, sexy read with a cowboy theme and added kid-cuteness, then give this a go.

The Rancher and the City Girl is out June 12th.
Visit Joya Ryan for more details.

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