One Night with a Cowboy
Grade : D

First, and most importantly, don’t be fooled by the title. This book should be titled One Night with a Former Rodeo Star or One Night with a Soldier, because cowboy this guy ain’t. Not even close at this point in his life.

So walking into the story there’s one expectation exploded. Unlike other books about cowboys, this one only has a rodeo setting for the first few chapters and then switches to the Oklahoma State University at Stillwater where the hero is a ROTC instructor and sponsors the rodeo club.

Unfortunately, this is another in the “great sex will keep us together” stories. And while I definitely believe that great sex will bring couples together, I know they have to have more to keep them that way. Oddly, the hero knows this too since he’s just getting over a rocky divorce.

When Vassar English instructor Becca Hart is laid off after budget cuts, her sister fills out an application for an OSU teaching position. Becca gets an interview, so off she and her sister troop to Stillwater for Becca’s interview.

There they decide to take in a rodeo where they meet part time bull rider Tucker Jenkins who immediately pegs Becca as a high maintenance city girl. But he has sex with her anyway even though in some respects she reminds him of his former wife, who cheated on him while he was deployed in the Army.

Both Becca and Tuck are surprised at an OSU faculty mixer when they run into each other again after their one night stand. Even though there’s a non-fraternization policy which Tuck knows about but Becca doesn’t (even though it’s in the faculty handbook they both have), they decide to have a friendship with benefits.

When they’re caught on surveillance tape making out in the library, Tuck re-ups in the Army, choosing to go to one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan in order to protect Becca’s job at the college.

Neither Becca nor Tuck is particularly likable. Becca has just been dumped after a long, fruitless relationship, yet she’s eager to have sex with Tuck, but doesn’t really get to know much about him. Tuck, for his part, has gone through an ugly divorce, swears he’ll never have anything to do with a high maintenance woman, yet consistently has sex with a city girl whom he doesn’t get to know very well.

The title is misleading, the opposites meet plot is flawed, and the opposites never try to get to know one another on a level other than hush puppies, fried bologna sandwiches and sex.

This is the first of a series of books I’ll just have to pass on reading. If Becca and Tuck are still together by the end of the series, it only proves that miracles do happen in fiction.

Reviewed by Pat Henshaw
Grade : D

Sensuality: Warm

Review Date : June 13, 2013

Publication Date: 2013/03

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