Can't Hurry Love

Can't Hurry Love, by Molly O'Keefe
 
If Rachel Gibson is a guilty pleasure, then you definitely should like Molly O'Keefe's Crooked Creek series. Even though they do stand alone, you would do well to start with, Can't Buy Me Love. It introduces you to the Crooked Creek Ranch and its dying patriarch, Lyle Baker. It is his will that propels the narrative and ignites the conflict between the protagonists. While in the first book in the series, you get a gutsy trailer trash heroine and a hunky hockey hero, the second takes quite a different tack. Victoria Baker, born on the wrong side of the sheets, is a little hard to like. Pretty, but she whines and whinges and can't get beyond the fact that her ex-husband betrayed her and her beloved son, Jacob, with his Madoff like Ponzi scheme. She is also a thorn in the side of Eli Turnbull, a typically rugged and too handsome cowboy, who feels that his family is the real owner of Crooked Creek, Predictably sparks fly and feelings are hurt and somehow it all comes together. The writing is surprisingly good. Molly O'Keefe's biography says that among many things, she wanted to be a cowgirl and a chef. I know that I was taken by her Texas descriptions and fell in love with Ruby the housekeeper and her fantastic Tex-Mex fare. Too bad we have to wait until January for the next installment. I am sure it will be worth it! *
-Marcia