Wyoming Rugged - Diana Palmer
Billionaire oilman Blair Coleman has always taken care of his business. After having been used and cast aside by a woman he thought he loved, his personal life is far from his first priority. He knows only one has ever truly cared for him—but the irresistible blonde beauty is the daughter of his best friend.
Niki Ashton has seen her father's friend wounded and she's seen him fight. Blair is the strongest—and most stubborn—man she's ever known. That very heart and passion makes him the man of her dreams, but whenever they've been in danger of getting close, Blair has always pushed her away.
It takes a possible tragedy to strip away all of Blair's misgivings. Now it's all or nothing: marriage, baby, family, forever. But will the choice be too much for Niki…or too late?
Right away, I will tell you that while this is #5 in the series, you would never know it. This is 100% a stand alone book, so that's really nice. Also, Diana Palmer is a new to me author and I would read her again, which tells you what I think about the book.So let's get the things that annoyed me out of the way now. First up, Niki.... sigh. Niki is like, she's naive but she's worse than naive. She's the phase before naive, she's practically puritanical. If you had locked a woman away in a dungeon with zero social contact and let her loose in a bar, that's the only way you could replicate her naivete. She has zero idea what flirting is, has zero idea what physical attraction feels like, and honestly, she's basically childlike in a way. Then Blair is a bit of a moron who spends the entire book focusing on the 16 year age gap, as if that's even an issue nowadays. Aside from that, my biggest complaint is that a solid 30 pages towards the end of the book? Could be taken out. At least. It's rehashing of them rehashing, or the first time they rehashed EVERYTHING. Honestly, it's either take that 30 pages out or get rid of the entire first part of the book and give us just the 30 pages. I found myself skipping entire pages because I had already read this stuff three, sometimes four times earlier in the book, already. Instead of all of that (without giving the conclusion of the book away) I would have liked to seen more of their ending. I feel like SO MUCH TIME was put into rehashing everything we've read that the ending was rushed and that does a disservice to the book, I think.
BUT. With that, it's a solid little romance. If you're looking for seedy love scenes and graphic detail, you will NOT get it in this book. If you are that person who likes to read a love story without all of the detail in love scenes, this is absolutely the book for you. It's an incredibly quick read (around 295 pages) and it's available as a mass paperback in December 2015, but you can pre-order it on Amazon right now. If you think this is for you, I encourage you to check out Diana's website and her Facebook page to see what you can get of hers right now.
Overall? I enjoyed it. Sure, the 30 page thing was annoying, but if I imagine the book without that, I really liked it. It's a good romance, a fast read, it kept me wanting to find out what happens with Niki's health and if Blair gets his head out of his ass.
Lucky for you..... I have one copy to giveaway (US/Canada)! To win a copy you must...
- Leave me a comment- what are you reading now or next?
- Make sure you EMAIL is in your comment so I can contact you if you win!
That's all, lambs! Have a ton of fun shopping this Black Friday. Think of me as I'm cleaning up the aftermath at Target today. Just know I'm exhausted and wish I was reading.