Caitlin Crews takes us back to her Kittredge Ranch series with Summer Nights with a Cowboy.  It’s the oft-told story of your average goofy, flusterbudget virgin meeting a steely eyed, overly-suspicious hero.  The heroine’s drippiness and the hero’s self-righteousness both left me cold, and drags this one down to a C.

After travelling the globe, nurse Janie Atwood has returned to Cold River to work as an aide to the crotchety Damaris Gardiner, to the disappointment of Damaris’ son, Andrew, who wants to put her in a home. Janie’s also planning on digging up the truth about her own family background; she was brought up by her grandparents after her mother died giving birth to her and knows next to nothing about her father or his family.

She literally bumps into Zack Kitteridge, the taciturn but handsome local sheriff and promptly spills her coffee on him, which makes things a little less than convivial between them.  She quickly learns Zack is her new neighbor, which just adds to the weirdness.

Zack has a large extended family and his job to distract him, but he’ll be darned if he isn’t suspicious of Janie.  When his relatives hint he’s interested in Janie for romantic purposes he scoffs, for he will Never Love a Woman, Ever – unlike his brothers who are falling into love traps left and right.  Zack suggests Janie is a gold digger trying to get Damaris’ money, hired by Andrew under suspicious circumstances.  When Janie suggests Zack could use an attitude adjustment, he agrees, and she ends up agreeing to give him charm lessons.  Will Janie find out the truth about her parents?  And will those charm lessons lead to something more?

Yes, but you may regret reading it.  Summer Nights with the Cowboy scours about for conflict and doing so fails to make its characters interesting, succeeding only in making them annoying.

Janie is one of those clumsy, adorkable, awkward,perky types who makes me facepalm.  Sometimes she’s witty, sometimes she’s swallowing her tongue around Zack while dreaming about swallowing his… well.  And she’s a virgin, to Zack’s shock (we’ll get to Zack’s weirdness vis Janie’s hymen in a minute). I tend to like my Crews heroines feisty, but Janie only occasionally touches those heights. Ninety percent of her brainpower is spent drooling over Zack, his attendant body parts, and dreaming hopefully that he will debauch her and pop her cherry.

Zack is one of those humorless, taciturn types who has his guard up all the time for reasons that make little to no sense. He has daddy issues, sure, and his mom went through stress that has given him the need to play pick-up-the pieces. He won’t fall in love because he is a loner – only he wants to spend every second of his time with Janie.

The relationship suffers from severe issues with the book’s general plot.  There’s no reason for Zack to find Janie suspicious, but he does so in order to hang around the Gardiner place and get closer to her. There’s no reason for him to agree to the charm lessons, other than he thinks she’s adorable, the way most people think little kids trying to force-feed you plastic play food is adorable. And of course, Janie is a virgin and desperate not to be a virgin anymore.  Zack is weirdly stunned that this girl, who has already disabused him of the notion that she is a femme fatale, is a virgin and is reluctant for a little while to give in and have sex with her.  Until he finally gives in and they’re sexing everywhere, which is a sort of holy agony to Janie and a sort of come-to-the-river healing experience for Zack.  Naturally, swimming in Janie’s virgin river(!) gives Zack emotional healing enough.  You know how it goes.  It’s been done, and Crews has done it far better than this.  As for the argument between Andrew and Damaris vis her staying independent or moving into an old folks home, the situation is settled abruptly and in an obvious manner.

So is Janie’s search for the parental side of her family.  There’s zero conflict here; the people on her dad’s side are happy to see her and don’t blame her mother for keeping Janie a secret.

I did like some things about the book; Janie’s friendship with Damaris, for one, and the complexities of what happened with Zack’s family.  Those things prevent it from hitting D territory. But Summer Nights with a Cowboy won’t go down in history as my favorite Crews book.

Buy it at: Amazon or your local independent retailer

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