A Cowboy Christmas isn’t all that Christmas-y. Our heroine decorates the house and the story takes place in late December, but that’s about it for holiday atmosphere – it could have been set in the summer just as well. This is a very busy tale with several subplots, and lots of characters but it’s not all that interesting. I began it just before Christmas and finally finished it after New Year’s Day, and frankly, it wasn’t exactly a book worth giving up Christmas parties for.

Ellie Jo Cade has a job all lined up teaching in a girl’s school, but before she begins she takes a temporary job as the cook at the Crown Seven Ranch. She’s not the best cook in the world, but it’s only a short job and she knows she can do it. The head honcho at the Crown Seven is Reid Barclay and when he and Ellie Jo first see each other, much mental lusting occurs on both their parts, but he is engaged and she has been burned by a false fiancé, so they don’t say anything – they just lust.

Reid is not only the head honcho, but is also part owner of the ranch. He was a homeless orphan when Kirby Morris took him and two of his friends in, eventually making them part owners of the ranch. The problem is that Reid has only a small share in the ranch and it’s not enough for him to do much with it. His two friends are missing and Kirby’s cousin Burl Elston owns most of the shares. Burl hates Reid almost as much as he hates Kenton Pearce, the man whom Kirby’s daughter Cheryl is in love with. However, Burl is Cheryl’s guardian and he wants her to marry Reid (I wasn’t sure exactly why). Pearce lives near the Crown Seven on a sheep ranch and Cheryl is pregnant with his child.

Meanwhile, Ellie Jo’s father, an old horse rustler, is living on the Crown Seven under an assumed name. He’s under suspicion of having killed a woman in a nearby town and wants to lay low until they find the real killer. While Ellie Jo is there, some of Reid’s prized horses go missing, but her father swears he is innocent. All these plot threads are eventually sort of tied together – but the result isn’t exactly neat since some of the threads remain pretty loose. I smell sequels in the works.

I can’t say I liked A Cowboy Christmas very much at all. I was lost as could be at first until a couple of infodumps set me straight as to who was who and why they were acting that way. After I got things sorted out, the story moved along well enough, but even at the end it never came together in a satisfying conclusion.

As for the characters, I can sum them up pretty succinctly. Ellie Jo was feisty and prone to leap to conclusions while Reid was brooding and taciturn. They were both filled with mental lust for most of the book but when they finally gave in and did the deed, it wasn’t all that emotionally satisfying.

For those of you who are still waiting for a really good western romance – sorry this isn’t it. The structure is too loose and the characters are too forgettable to make it a satisfactory read.