Going Cowboy Crazy by Katie Lane

🍎🍎🍎🍎

I knew moving forward based on my mood, I wanted to stick with contemporary but on the happier side. After reading Grumpy Cowboy a couple weekends ago, I wanted more cowboy romances. I was looking at some historical options as well, but found Going Cowboy Crazy by Katie Lane already on my goodreads tbr. This is the first book in her Deep in the Heart of Texas series. It has my favorite trope, wrong sibling, and sounded like it would fit what I was in the mood for. I was also able to apply this to the prompt guy on the the left side of the cover for Summer of Swoon board 2.

Faith is in the Texan small town Bramble. Her mother had passed away recently and revealed that Faith is adopted and has a twin sister in Bramble. She was raised by college professors in Chicago and is a complete fish out of water in Bramble. She walks into the only open place in town, the bar. She gets recognized as her sister Hope and decides to stay quiet to learn more about her. Slate is Hope's high school sweetheart and they get thrust together. Hope has gone to Hollywood to be an actor, but the town wants her to stay in town. They end up "impounding" her car and banding together to pair Slate and Hope back together.

This was really cute, but I did have a couple issues with the book. What I didn't like was the almost stereotypical scenes and characters. It felt a little too stereotypical sometimes and not real. I also got a little bit annoyed at the people in town. I understand that there was kind of mob mentality and everyone wanted to believe what they wanted to, but it took too long for people to start realizing that Faith was not Hope. I totally felt for Faith and really connected with her frustration, but it just lasted too long. I also really disliked that people kept doing what they thought "she" wanted without her consent. I was so pissed when that lady died her hair and tried to change her hair. People also were on her for drinking her coffee differently and eating differently. Hope has been living in Hollywood for several years at this point, and even if she hadn't moved away people can change. I just got so frustrated with the town. 

While Slate and Faith connected and were more lustful in their relationship to start with, I liked how they stepped back and started to connect more emotionally. Faith really gets put through the ringer finding out that she was the only one adopted out and that Hope was raised with their birth parents. While I understood their reasoning, I didn't like how quickly things smoothed over. Faith has a lot of hurt to process that gets compounded and I didn't like how quickly it was dealt with. I didn't need to see everything, but it felt too quick for her to start calling them mom and dad and live with them. I also didn't like that they treated her like she was a teenager and not a 30-year old woman. I did enjoy Faith and Slate's relationship and really was able to connect to her. There were some weird choices made, and I did not like how her sister treated Hope treated her when she came to town. Really Faith and Slate saved this book for me despite it having a fairly cliché 3rd act break-up.

This is Katie Lane's debut novel and I'm definitely intrigued to read more from her. While there were things I didn't like, there was also some good parts, the main one being the relationship between Faith and Slate. I might try one of her more recent works next to see how she's progressed. I am also intrigued for the next book in the series since it's about Hope and I'd like to see her find her own and be redeemed a little bit. I will definitely try some more books by Katie. It's really just the town that bothered me the most about this book and how they treated Faith, so that hopefully that won't be an issue in the other books. We'll see where my mood takes me.

Have you read Going Cowboy Crazy?

Bookishly Yours,

Stasi🍎

STATISTICS: Going Cowboy Crazy, Katie Lane, 4-stars, 1 day, eBook, 372 pages, published in 2011