Reckless in Texas (Texas Rodeo, #1)

Kari Lynn Dell

I'm not giving this one a star rating because it is so unlike anything I've read that I can't fairly evaluate it on its own terms. This genre isn't trying to push the novel form form forward or uncover an enlightening truth about a lofty philosophical problem as far as I can tell having read only this single book. What it does do, however, is provide an interesting escape along shockingly conservative assumptive lines. What I thought I'd be getting into with this story was a sappy book with lots of naughty parts. That couldn't be further from what this is. My whole concept of the romance novel was wrong and quite honestly unfair. This book is a love story more than a hot and heavy sexscape. Not that I'm disappointed, I just didn't know what to expect (maybe a little disappointed). I found the book a little long, which forced me to read faster, which might be the way these books are normally consumed because after I adjusted my pace, realizing I wasn't in danger of missing anything, the story took over and I found myself comfortable riding through this world of rodeo management and the physical and mental toll it takes on its workers. That is at the heart of what makes this book interesting. Kari Lynn Dell wrote about a fascinating sub-culture of rodeo - something I didn't know anything about. Yes, a lot of the inner dilemmas the protagonists face are borne out of living with assumptions about gender forged through the pressures and levers of a myopic and sensitive closed community (eyebrow raising to see how this American Christian Conservative political class is assembled from the conditions of this novel's setting). All of that was so weird to me so it wasn't like I related to any of the characters but I certainly understood them. Even when they would say things like "Well isn't that just like a woman." I'm so glad I read this book. Dell had a strong and charismatic voice as a writer (sadly, she passed at a very early age). The experience of reading my first romance novel put me out of my comfort zone but I was pleasantly surprised.