Bookworm in the City

What it is: contemporary romance with a content warning
Did I like it: it wasn’t for me

For months I’ve been trying to remember when, where or why I bought this book. My best guess is a train station bookshop by lack of anything else from my wish list or within budget available because contemporary romance is not something I veer towards and the summary on the back isn’t the most intriguing. It turns out I can not only surprise or scare myself, but confuse myself as well.
But, as we all know, there is a time for every book and it came in handy during my first week of commuting to and from the new job. A new job comes with a lot of new information to process and a light and fluffy read during the commute allowed me to give my brain some much-earned rest to compensate.

The book starts by warning the reader about the adult content (something I had never seen before) and it wasn’t for nothing because this story contains a plenty of that, so I’m following up with a warning of my own: if that’s not your jam, don’t bother with this book.
Ignoring the language part, the story was..hm, sort of okay. It contains multiple tropes from the romanceverse: opposites attract, grumpy-vs-sunshine, and fish out of water.
Main characters, and telling the story in present tense in alternate chapters, are Christian and Cassandra. Cassandra has a type A personality, lives in New York City where she enjoys a high-flying career in publicity that includes mingling with celebrities and fashion designers. An incident sees her demoted to working corporate accounts only, starting with a cattle ranch in Texas. Her boss, who is also her fiancé, drops her off on the ranch before he flies off to Spain to take over her former client. Messy.
The ranch belongs to the Griffith family, and super mellow Christian is its general manager. He is a widower and father of two young girls, and doesn’t hold back on his opinions (even though he doesn’t like it when people tell him theirs). Within two minutes of meeting, he tells Cassandra that her fiancé is an idiot and she should dump him. Thinking that is one thing, but to basically tell someone you literally met minutes ago and don’t know at all, that they are making bad life decisions is pretty rude. And it doesn’t stop there; Christian is also absolutely adamant that a woman riding in his car is not allowed to open the doors herself. On multiple occasions he makes his daughters and Cassandra go back in the car, shuts the door on them, and then makes them wait for him to open it. It’s probably well-meant but it made me itch as it read more about dominating women to me than chivalry.
As the trope predicts, Cassandra is a fiercely independent woman who doesn’t like being told what she can or cannot do. Cassandra doesn’t like people, especially children, nor pets. So, moving into the house with Christian, his daughters, dog and pet cow, because the guest house is flooded, is her personal nightmare.
Christian doesn’t like the way Cassandra talks to his daughters (as if they are adults), even though the children find it refreshing and like her for it. Cassandra, the daughters, and I were annoyed by Christian’s closed-mindedness.

The story has something to do with future proofing the ranch but it’s mostly about how Cassandra and Christian are opposites that attract.
It seemed that Cassandra was the one doing the growing, as she was also the fish out of water, and Christian tended to be a bit of a bully with her which is why I didn’t like him. Then there was a big incident involving one of Christian’s brothers which causes him to break down, revealing some unexpected and oddly timed (too close to the end of the story) revelations about his personality. The incident with his brother is also something that kicks off another book and I wonder about the timelines of these stories, where and how they overlap. (Although I’m not curious enough to consider reading it.) Then to add to the oddness, the epilogue is in two parts as well, one from each of their perspectives, taking place eleven years later. It was such a big jump in time and it didn’t really add anything for me. Especially with romance novels I always question the use of epilogues anyway, because if one thing is for certain, it’s that there is a happily-ever-after.

All in all this book was okay enough to keep me entertained on days that I didn’t have enough brain cells available for anything else. If you like reading spicy contemporary romance this might be just for you (and if so, don’t forget to check out the other titles in the series), but for me, the kids and animals were the best parts of the story and I was keen to move onto something new as soon as I finished the last page.