Title: Rancher’s Forgotten Rival
Author: Maisey Yates
Series: Carsons of Lone Rock #1
Shallow writing hiding behind humor and sex
I would like to thank Maisey Yates, Harlequin, and NetGalley for allowing me to read a free ARC in exchange for an honest review. And thank you to Lisa Wray for inviting me on the blog tour.
I feel like I see Maisey Yates’s books everywhere, and I’ve been meaning to check her out for a couple years now. I finally did so thanks to Harlequin’s blog tours, and I can see why she’s as popular as she is. I also finally understand how she’s as prolific as she is.
FYI, while this book may be marketed as the first in a new series, it’s actually kind of a Gold Valley spin-off; if you follow Yates’s work, you met Callie Carson, the sister to this book’s hero, in Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch. Now this series will visit each of Callie’s brothers.
At first I thought this book was great with just a couple minor flaws. It was SO funny, quick and quippy and charming. But as I wrote this review and thought about those flaws, I became more and more disenchanted.
Let me quick touch on the foremost characters. I wasn’t super fond of Chance, but he was a decently written hero. I adored Juniper, so full of humanizing faults and insecurities but not truly an asshole. Chance was barely likeable to me, too arrogant, even toward the end, but I loved Juniper. I also loved her sister Shelby.
Okay, getting into the flaws. First, a pretty minor one: I found the tone a bit jarring. Generally it had a light, fun tone, not a whole lot of street talk like swearing or crudeness, not dark or too serious. Lots of euphemisms and jokes. I was expecting relatively chaste sex scenes, more focus on the emotions than the physicality. But nope, the sex scenes were raunchy and explicit. No where near erotica level, but definitely more graphic than I was expecting. Not a matter of prudishness, those scenes just felt like a departure in tone compared to the rest of the novel.
Second, Yates’s writing style was a mixed bag. I appreciated that it was, again, quick and quippy and charming, fun and full of energy, but it was also full of fragmented sentences that made the narrative feel choppy and even hard to follow at times. The material also contained a concerning amount of ambiguous pronouns. Additionally, Yates relies heavily on dialogue with very little exposition; this helps the pace stay fast and light, but it runs the risk of feeling rushed, or the story shallow. At times I only had vague mental pictures of setting or what was happening in the scene, because all there was to go off of was a few movements and dialogue. I’m seeing how Yates manages to be so prolific—short, shallow stories are quick and easy to produce.
Third, there seemed to be some messed up timing at one point a little past halfway. Juniper comes home after work with burgers for supper, agrees to meet Chance at Evergreen the next morning, then it jumps to Chance going home to change clothes—unclear where he spent the night—and meeting his brothers having lunch at Evergreen, shortly after which Juniper arrives. One assumes it’s the next day, but it’s actually written as if it’s all the same day. Makes no sense. Hopefully that got fixed in the final copy.
Lastly, and what bothers me the most, Yates didn’t bother to complete the plot. Chance and Juniper get together, sure, lovey dovey smoochie smoochie, but Yates totally ditched her own premise. The entire story is built upon the night Chance’s great-great-grandfather cheated Juniper’s great-great-grandfather at cards—maybe?—and stole Sohappy land. Again and again Chance said he was going to look into the family history and find out what really happened that night, try to find evidence or proof, but he never did. Instead, he hosted a barbecue. He played politician instead of detective (another reason I didn’t warm to him much), and I was SOOOO disappointed. Yeah, it’s great that he convinced everyone to grow up and get along, but how boring is that? We never did find out what the truth was, everyone in both families just more or less very easily agreed to let the matter go. Again, shallow writing.
So yeah, I’m not as impressed with Yates as I thought at first. Ostensibly the book was fun and fresh and entertaining, but now after I’ve thought about it, all I see is a contract-filler written with little effort. Ugh. I’m curious to check out some of Yates’s other work to see if all her books are like this, or if I’m just getting a bad first impression.
