Review: One Hot Cowboy Wedding by Carolyn Brown

Funny characters and a hell of a lot of Texas twang could only take this book so far before it fizzled out.

It’s a romance cliche to end a novel with a wedding. Carolyn Brown dumps that cliche on its head and starts her book with Jasmine King and Ace Riley getting married in a Las Vegas chapel.

They’re doing it because Ace has just found out about a stipulation in his grandfather’s will that says he needs to be married for a year or his ranch will go to a hated cousin. Jasmine, Ace’s best friend, has had a disastrous break up and, since she’s not planning on getting back in that saddle for at least a year, proposes to Ace thinking that no one in their small town has to know.

Except that their wedding ends up making the national news. And the dreaded cousin starts making problems for them. And they have to live together at the ranch and make their marriage look convincing to the bunch of cowboys that live there, too.

I’ll admit, I’m a sucker for modern marriage-of-convenience stories. Married for a will or a business deal? Eh, depends on how it’s done. I was able to suspend my disbelief long enough to get into this story – also long enough to really start caring for Jazzy and Ace as characters.

But once they move in together, the conflict mellows out and there’s still more than half the book left. They’re married, they’re living together, they’re best friends who are attracted to each other, they’re having sex…what’s keeping them from actually being together?

Not a whole lot. There are a few misunderstandings, some of which are inadequately explained. There’s a hell of a lot of interaction with all their friends and family (too much for my taste – there are so many secondary characters that this small town felt overpopulated, and I felt like I was having new names tossed at me every few sentences).

I wanted something much more dynamic after the quirkiness of the opening. But I was disappointed.

Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Heat: Hot (as the title suggests :))

Publication date: April 3, 2012

Publisher: Sourcebooks

Have you read any of Carolyn Brown’s novels? This was the first one I’ve read, and I’d love to know what you think of her books. Which would you recommend?