Review - Tyler by C.H. Admirand

TITLE:    Tyler (The Secret Life of Cowboys)
AUTHOR:    C.H. Admirand
INFO:    Paperback, Fiction, 337 pages
PUBLISHED:   Sourcebooks, 2011
SOURCE:   Received from Publisher for review

FROM GOODREADS:    Faced with a mountain of bills, rancher Tyler Garahan takes a night job with a lot of trepidation. But being a male performer at a strip club does come with at least one beautiful compensation-and feisty red-haired bookkeeper Emily Langley seems to understand Tyler even better than he understands himself...


MY TAKE:    I have come to a realization that I shouldn't read books that are about things that I have a deep personal knowledge of.  Even though it's fiction where the writer has complete artistic license, I get distracted when the subject matter is way off mark from what I know.  Real-life working cowboys are one of those subjects.  For those of you that don't already know, I grew up on a cattle and horse ranch.  Around dozens and dozens of true life, high-def working cowboys in all of their dust, manure and glory. I am still surrounded by many of these same guys to this day. This fact and my own realities of ranch life made it really hard for me to get into a book like this.  I find myself trying to picture even one of these guys I know in these situations and I fail miserably. 

In this story, Tyler is a cowboy, who along with his brothers owns a ranch that they are in danger of losing.  He decides to take a job as a male stripper in order to make ends meet.  The opening scene of the book is Tyler applying for a job and being sexually assaulted by several women.  (There is really no other description for it, sorry.)  While that sounds sexy and I'm sure really appealing to most men, I guarantee that any of the cowboys that I grew up with and around would have run screaming for the hills, even if it meant no paycheck. 

The romance aspect between Tyler and Emily was enjoyable, quite steamy.  In fact, I liked her character quite a bit.  She was funny and warm while the rest of the women, including Tyler's ex, came across as piranhas and other not so nice creatures.  Even with Emily being sweet and Tyler being sexy, I just couldn't really dig up enough feeling to care about all of these characters and their story.

I do want to say that I like the author's writing style.  Her words flow and she isn't overly-descriptive when it isn't warranted. You move quickly through the pages without being bogged down by extraneous information.  I think if the cowboy portrayal didn't annoy me, I would have really enjoyed the story.  Maybe if it had been a pilot as the main character?  (Even though I worked at an airline for a few years, several of the pilots I knew would have loved being pawed at and mauled by overly-amorous women :) 

I do think fans of western romance and romance in general, should give the book a try. Like I said above, the romance part is good, the cowboy and ranch part just wasn't a fit for me personally.  I AM looking forward to reading some of the author's medieval stories with swords and men in kilts!!  These sound good:

        

The Saxon Bride & The Lord of Merewood Keep

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Out of 5 JEWELS, I give it:

It was OK

WHERE TO BUY IT:    Amazon and The Book Depository

 
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