Billion Dollar Cowboy

by Carolyn Brown

[Cocktails and Books]

The heroine, Laura, meets the hero and billion dollar cowboy, Colton, while working on his ranch to pay off a debt owed to her cousin, Andy, for settling a debt to loan sharks that was incurred by her sister, Janet. Okay, there were so many unrealistic and flimsy parts of this storyline that I frequently stopped and reasoned with myself to encourage myself to finish this book. The book explains that Colton won a million dollars in the lottery and Andy invested it to yield over a billion dollars. I checked to see if this was a historical romance and nope..it was a contemporary. So what investments go from less than one million dollars (after taxes) to over a billion dollars in the last few years---of course the answer is none. I'm not sure why the author even bothered to include an explanation if she wasn't going to make it at least partly realistic.

Another condition of paying off the loan sharks is that Laura have no contact with her sister. Almost as soon as Laura arrives Andy begins offering her communication with her sister, visits, etc. to pretend that she and Colton are in a relationship. And even when the sister arrives at ranch after Laura whines on and on throughout the book about them being the only one there for each other--they stay in different rooms and don't get along at all. They fight within minutes of Janet arriving. Then Janet is depicted as looking ""well worn"" and trying to get Laura to scam Colton for his money. In the next few pages she alternately wants to sabotage Laura in a competition, sleep with another cowboy on the ranch, hurt Laura by telling her that she is still gambling, and then suddenly tells Laura Colton is too good to hurt or let go. I was totally confused is Janet the mean, low-down sister using Laura to protect her and keep her habit going or has she been rehabilitated, redeemed, and is now giving Laura good advice? The lack of detail and speed of progression made it impossible to understand why Janet was engaging with Laura in this way.

The romance never really got off the ground for me. The book had an identity crisis. It seems that the author couldn't decide whether she wanted a sweet romance, inspirational romance, or erotic romance. Colton is supposedly poisoned by a woman in town and needs protection. Andy and the rest of the family dream up using Laura as his pretend girlfriend. They begin by taking Laura to church and to her surprise she sits next to Colton and shares a potluck dinner with him while the others go home. There were several scenes where Laura and Colton were at church or the pastor was at their home. There were several passages concerning the pastor findng a wife (that previously wanted Colton) and refusing to leave the church because God wanted him to remain in the little town of Ambrose. Why include church services, congregational members, and scripture passages but then have it go absolutely nowhere. I get that church is a big part of most people's lives in Texas, but it would have helped to have it actually tie into their relationship. Maybe have the pastor counsel them or maybe they get an epiphany at the church but there was nothing of the kind. At one point Colton even admitted he found more inspiration at a schoolyard than church.

There is very little chemistry between the two. They sleep together while out of town to attend a social function but it's so perfunctory it's almost annoying. They become aroused while dancing and rush back to the room to finally have sex. No details are given (unless you count he entered her as a detail) and after supposedly being unable to keep their hands off each other they have sex once and are so overcome from the intensity that they fall right to sleep. What??? When they arrive back home they have sex everywhere except their beds multiple times and a little more in the way of details is given here. I guess these times weren't so intense since they could have sex several times in a few hours. Finally Laura admits she doesn't want to have sex in a bed with Colton and spend the night because of commitment issues. That's it. No exploration and when she finally ends up in bed with him there is no romantic pillow talk from him to her to explore her issues or calm her fears. It's more or less so you did it and yaay for you. It was a total miss on the romance for me.

The changes in scene were very abrupt. Several times the book jumped ahead to the next day or next several days with no warning or segue. i would have to go back to see if I accidentally missed something. The flow was very choppy.

The plot synopsis sounded very promising but because of the multiple elements of romantic genres and the many characters that were featured I became lost many times while reading this book. I was so prepared to absolutely fall in love with this book it hurt to see the author fail to take advantage of multiple missed opportunities to turn a lukewarm book into a great book. If she had picked a direction (specific subset of romance) and fully developed it this book could have really been an attention grabber.

Reviewed by Michelle for Cocktails and Books