I read Carly Bloom’s third “Once Upon a Time in Texas” romance, Must Love Cowboys, and the joy and enjoyment of the first, Big Bad Cowboy, still eludes Bloom and me. I absolutely LOVED the first book; though #3 was an improvement on the sleeper-ness of #2, it only sustained my admiration two-thirds of the way through. (more…)
Tag: Carly Bloom
MINI-REVIEW: Carly Bloom’s COWBOY COME HOME
Carly Bloom’s Big Bad Cowboy was one of my top 2018 reads, so my expectations for Cowboy Come Home were sky-high. The result? Big Bad Cowboy remains perfection from start to finish; Cowboy Come Home is better in parts than sum.
It held tropish-goodness-potential because reunited lovers, second-chance-at-love romance! Heroine Claire Kowalski loves stilettos, marketing, and her parents’ ranch, Rancho Canada Verde. Two years ago, she also loved ranch manager, Ford Jarvis, who loved and left her. Ford’s back, at her father’s behest, and the town of Big Verde has yet to witness a confrontation such as Claire and Ford’s. Claire is rightly in a rage and Ford is humbly contrite. Bloom’s ethos, however, is comic and her writing penchant is for nice people. Claire fumes and glares, but she’s a good-hearted soul who is still in love with Ford. Ford still loves Claire, but possesses internal obstacles to being with her, then and now. Add oodles of funny friends, neighbours, siblings, and parents who recognize how Claire and Ford “really” feel about each other and their reunion and eventual commitment is head-on, like a bull following the cape. (more…)
Miss Bates’s Stand-Out Books: 2018 Edition
Dear friends and readers, another year with Miss Bates in the waning light of blogs everywhere. Romance review blogging has given way to Twitter, #bookstagram, etc. and you can find me there, as well as Goodreads and Netgalley, if that’s where you get your reviews. The new and shiny is always a temptation, but I happen to think that the best engagement for reading books is writing about them. So I shall continue to do so. Thank you for reading, commenting, and plain old sticking by me and whatever idiosyncratic reading thoughts and opinions I throw your way. I wish you and yours a happy, healthy, prosperous, inspired and inspiring 2019 and oodles of wonderful books.
I had a great reading year, exceeding my Goodreads goal of a hundred books. I enjoyed many romance novels this year and expanded my non-fiction reading to balance out the HEAs. Below are the best books I read in 2018. I started this post on the first of 2018 and it blossomed with many-a-title till December 31st. It originally had over 30 “favourite” titles. My criteria for the final twelve that follow was simple: if I could vividly remember scenes, ideas, characters, or atmosphere, then it merited inclusion. If the book was “great” at the time of reading but faded over time, well then, it was excised. I hope to articulate, with a few lines for each, what stayed, lingered, and impressed me … strictly from memory, so these will be, at best, impressionistic “reviews”. (more…)
REVIEW: Carly Bloom’s BIG BAD COWBOY
Carly Bloom is a new-to-me author and Big Bad Cowboy, her début romance. If she sustains this level of humour and pathos, then she has a good chance of becoming many romance readers’ autobuy. Big Bad Cowboy is a tongue-in-cheek pastiche of many romance conceits and in its combining of them, uniquely itself. Be warned, however, Big Bad Cowboy is busy with conceits and stories within stories. To start, the hero, Travis Blake, newly-returned Afghan vet to his dilapidated, tax-debt-ridden Texas ranch and uncle to his incarcerated brother’s and dead sister-in-law’s five-year-old, Henry. Henry is precocious, hilariously sharp-tongued, and Travis knows it from the get-go: “Henry struck him as being smarter than the average five-year-old, which was probably the very worst kind of five-year-old.” Henry provides so much of the novel’s humour; he’s not twee, but acts very much like a Shakespearean sprite: mischievous, temperamental, smart … with moments of heart-breaking pathos. Travis cares for him, indulges him, and knows exactly the right touch to let him know he’s safe, cared-for, loved, cherished. So, for Bloom, there’s one relationship that makes the heart glow and lips grin, what of the rest?
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Miss Bates Reads Romance 