Genre: CR
Length: 226 (Kindle pgs)
Heat Level/Content: steamy/sensual
Publication Date: Apr 9, 2012 (orig = Apr 1, 2001)
Publisher: Beyond the Page Publishing
Series Info: N/A
BLURB:
If you like your cowboys sexy, your heroines forgetful and your marriages convenient, this gentle parody of cowboy romances will leave you with a smile on your face and a sigh on your lips. Discover romantic comedy at its best in this captivating tale of a woman who finds her one true love and the cowboy hero afraid to give his heart.
Michelle Garrison is a prolific romance writer whose career is suddenly on a downslide. Her plots are boring, her writing is stale and her readers are fleeing for greener pastures. Desperate to revive her career, Michelle sets out to write a bestseller, and who could make a more worthy hero than a cowboy.
Force-marched to a dude ranch by her editor, Michelle soon finds herself trudging along a mountain road with no memory of who she is or where she's going, but thanks to the quintessential sexy cowboy hero, Michelle is saved. Swept up in her cowboy's arms even Michelle can see the parody in her own story: "Everything she'd read about cowboys must be true, she thought, almost hysterically. No wonder they made such popular heroes in romances."
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* Review copy provided by the author/publisher via NetGalley.
This story is dedicated, with much affection, to all romance authors, especially those whose editors have admonished them to “write the book of your heart.”
(With the caveat “so long as it has a cowboy hero, an amnesiac bride, and a marriage of convenience. Oh, and a secret baby wouldn’t hurt.”)
The dedication says it all. The plot seems to use everything but the proverbial kitchen sink (or would that be secret baby? *grins*) and yet somehow, Cowboy in My Pocket rises above the deliberate, tongue-in-cheek clichés to become a fun, sweet, city-meets-country romance. I don't know if Ms. Douglas ever visited a dude ranch for research, but for this city gal, she brought a slice of Colorado ranch to life. :)
Very enjoyable CR from an author mostly known for her rather 'racy' PNR (so TBT, I was a tad *cough* disappointed that this story was more 'sensual'). Enough so that I hunted down a copy of the 2011 anthology, The Promise of Love, so to read the quasi-sequel, “Dime Store Cowboy”.
Full review to be posted shortly.