Romantic big city girl meets down-home country girl in The Ride of Her Life. It’s a sweet, spirited read that’s fun and enjoyable, but the miscommunication level between the leads is annoyingly high.

Molly is a romantic who has fantasies of falling in love. She’s been planning her wedding since she was a child, but the next best thing is running her own wedding planning business.

Unfortunately, a stack of debt and a series of failed careers have made it a non-starter. When the universe does her a solid, it’s via an inheritance from her dead aunt. Though the horse barn is struggling, it at least provides Molly a possible leg up. She didn’t know it also comes with employees and a passel of horses.

Shani developed a bond with Molly’s aunt in her dying days, and she’s horrified that Molly might sell the business. It’s clear that Molly has no idea what she’s doing as she tries to whip the place into shape in order to sell it. Shani starts out doing what she can to keep a full out disaster from happening, but soon those little moments add up to something big.

The problem here is the Big Mis. Molly and Shani have the worst possible impressions of one another and those impressions continue for pages and pages until they are talked out – only for another to arrive. This is annoying.

I liked Shani’s crustiness and Molly’s can’t-get-her-stuff-together ways; neither of them are perfect people but their adventures are enjoyable. The feeling of the farm and country are quite charmingly written. But the tension rings falsely and that was enough to cause me to mark down The Ride of Her Life to a low-grade B. But it’s still a charming novel, even with its tedious moments.