Review: Samantha and the Cowboy

Samantha and the Cowboy by Lorraine Heath

My rating: 2 of 5 stars



This book is part of the Avon teen historical romance series. I picked it up because I enjoyed a couple of other books in the series (by a different author, though), and hoped for the same quality from another author. No such luck. I guess the cheesy cover should have been my first clue.

This was a great idea, poorly executed. There was so much potential - a girl poses as a boy to get a job driving cattle, suffers hardships and danger, and falls in love with a cowboy along the way. This should have been so much more fun!

Instead, the action is sparse, and most of the time all we get is what the characters think about the action or about each other. At least half the book focuses on Samantha's inner dialogue. This isn't word-for-word, but here's the gist of it: "What am I feeling? Why am I feeling it? Why do his hands fascinate me? I've never paid attention to boys before and now I am. What does it mean? What could it possibly be?"

On top of that, we don't even get to see the last part of the cattle drive! All of a sudden it just skips to Sam's homecoming at the end. The author focuses so much on the feelings of attraction between the characters that she neglects the rest of the story, and in my opinion, the romance also suffers as a result.



View all my reviews