Close Enough to Touch: A Romance Novel (Jackson Hole, #1)

by Victoria Dahl

For makeup artist Grace Barrett, Hollywood isn't the land of golden opportunity. It's the land of difficult divas, cheating boyfriends and unemployment. So when her great-aunt offers her a free place to stay in Jackson Hole, Grace thinks she'll spend a little time in the sticks to figure out her life, and then move somewhere exciting to live out her dreams. But it turns out that there are a few more thrills in this small town than Grace was expecting....

Cole Rawlins is a rugged Wyoming cowboy born and bred. Yet he can't help but be drawn to the fascinating big-city girl who moves in across from him. He wants to get close enough to Grace to see past her tough facade, but if he does, she might see the real Cole. The one with a Hollywood history gone bad. As they discover a sizzling attraction, it becomes harder for him to keep his demons at bay--and those fires from long ago may burn them both.

They'll need more than scorching-hot passion to make this opposites-attract affair work. But if they can learn to trust one another enough to reveal their secrets, they just might have a chance at forever.

• ISBN10: 1459237854
• ISBN13: 9781459237858
• Publish Date: 1 September 2012 (first published 1 January 2012)
• Publish Status: Active
• Imprint: Harlequin Books
• Format: eBook
• Language: English

Reviews

[Linda]

I loved Close Enough to Touch, both because I found the characters to be so compelling, and because the story was very touching!

[Rowena]

This book follows Grace Barrett as she leaves Hollywood behind for Jackson Hole, Wyoming. She’s broke, owes her ex money and needs a place to stay until the job up in Vancouver opens up in five weeks. With her only family member in a nursing home, Grace heads up to Wyoming where a free apartment opened up from an aunt she hasn’t seen in years but remembers as a meanie from when she was little. Her grandmother called in a favor and Grace is set for the next five weeks. She just needs to get a job and then she’ll really be set.

The apartment that she’ll be staying at is known around town as the Stud Farm. It’s been dubbed the Stud Farm because the crazy lady that owns the place only lets hot guys live there. The crazy lady just happens to be Grace’s Aunt.

So the story revolves around the romance that blossoms between Grace and her next door neighbor Cole Rawlins. Grace’s plan is to stay here, make some money to pay her ex back and then move to Vancouver as soon as she can. She wasn’t planning on getting close to her hot next door neighbor and she wasn’t planning on staying in Jackson Hole either.

Cole is a cowboy on the injured list. He broke his hip and is going through physical therapy right now to find out if he’ll ever be able to ride a horse again. His future plans included buying the ranch that he’s working on now to make his father proud of him. Being a cowboy is all he’s been and he’s been working his butt off to buy this ranch. If he can’t ride a horse than he won’t be any good as a ranch owner. Being out of work until he gets better leaves him with a lot of time on his hands and being attracted to his new neighbor is looking like a good way to keep his mind off of his worries. He has some bad history with the last city girl that he got all starry eyed over so he was determined to leave those city girls to other guys but there’s something about Grace Barrett that gets to him and he can’t help himself, he has to get closer to her.

I really wanted to like this book but there were too many little things that got on my nerves so much that it was too easy for me to put it down. It took me too long to read this book because I kept getting annoyed with Grace and then with Cole that I almost DNF’d it. I wasn’t a fan of Grace’s attitude when she came into town. She was annoying in that, I’m independent and I don’t need or want help from anyone when really? She needed some damn help. I also wasn’t a fan of the way that they both handled their relationship toward the end. They over hear things, they explode on each other and then both feel like idiots because they assumed things about the other. And then they repeated their mistakes. It got old and when the past catches up with Grace? The way that she handled that business made me want to smack the crap out of her. All the way up to the very end, both Cole and Grace got on my nerves so my enjoyment of the book as a whole suffered for it.

I’m sure there are a lot of other people who would enjoy this book because it wasn’t badly written or anything but my enjoyment suffered because the main couple got on my hot damn nerves a lot. I did enjoy getting to know the other characters in the book. I enjoyed Easy, Aunt Raylene and the friends that Grace made in Jackson Hole. But for every good thing that I enjoyed, there was something that I didn’t enjoy. Like the whole deal with Madeline in the end, all of the assuming on both Cole and Grace’s part and the distrust that was evident on both of their ends throughout the entire book. Right from the very beginning, I knew what was going to happen, how everything was going to pan out and I wasn’t wrong. This isn’t my favorite book by Dahl but I know that it won’t be my last book either.

[Leah]

Victoria Dahl is a prolific romance writer of both contemporary and historical fiction. She’s hugely popular in the US, but I’ve never had the opportunity to read one of her books (romance isn’t REALLY my thing – I like romance in a novel, but I don’t like pure romance novels. Even I know that that sounds strange, but I know what I mean). However, when I saw her new novel on Netgalley, and saw the word “Hollywood”, I requested it, hoping for a fab Hollywood novel. That’ll serve me right for not reading the full, entire synopsis which would have told me the novel is a cowboy novel set in Wyoming, and is not a glamorous Hollywood novel about a make-up artist. Woops. Not that that actually bothered me, because as soon as I started reading, I couldn’t put the bloody book down. Or, rather, I couldn’t put my Kindle down. I read the first 40% in about an hour and a half, when I really should have been sleeping and I just motored on from there.

Grace Barret is a make-up artist with a spiky attitude and a past she doesn’t want to discuss. After upping and leaving her not-so-glam Hollywood life, she finds herself renting an apartment from her Aunt. In Jackon, Wyoming. Where cowboys live. There she meets Cole Rawlins, her brand-new next door neighbour who is (you guessed it!) a cowboy. Trouble is, he smashed his leg up really bad and is only just on the road to recovery, fearing he may never be able to ride a horse again. Both have a reason for the secrets they keep, and neither want to really tell the other their secrets, but they find each other attractive nonetheless, and time will tell if Cole and Grace can actually stand the test of time – and secrets.

As I said, I was absolutely absorbed in Close Enough To Touch as soon as I started it. The time and the percentage just flew by as I found myself massively absorbed in Grace and Cole, and cowboy life, and Wyoming. I must admit, if I had properly read the synopsis I may have been put off. Cowboys, seriously? In this day and age? But, really, I know cowboys do still exist. They’re not like dinosaurs, not extinct, and certainly not just from the spaghetti western movies I have never seen (or particularly want to see). But I was proven sooooooooo wrong. Cole is the hottest sounding cowboy ever and I loved the cowboy aspect so much that I can’t WAIT to get back to Jackson, Wyoming. Like, hello, Victoria, where is the second book? I can’t wait until April! It’s only August.

The writing was what really grabbed me (and confused me somewhat). I find third-person to usually be very cold and clinical. Don’t get me wrong, it tells a fine story, but first person is always more warm, more inviting, easier for us to know what the heroine of the novel is thinking. However, Dahl has turned that on its head with her very easy to read and easy to get into narrative for Close Enough To Touch. It’s third-person alright, but it’s ridiculously absorbing. It just goes like a train, and it’s the kind of easy writing style I absolutely adore. This book seriously blew me away. It exceeded all of my expectations, the writing style was awesome (it’s like writing is just effortless for Victoria Dahl, that the words just write themselves), and the characters were the coolest, hot people ever. I adored Close Enough To Touch and I am so glad I read it. It’s such an absorbing read and Dahl is such an absorbing writer, and I can’t wait to see what’s next for the folks of Jackson, Wyoming. It can’t come soon enough.