This was my first time reading Drake Leigh and unfortunately I felt that the story could do with a little bit of back story in between the chapters to connect everything together; it jumps from them meeting to the wedding to them having a child with nothing to show how they got to that point or what happened along the way. After the accident when arranging the funeral she mentions being in Cardiff and Blake is flying in from Austin so I assume she used to live in the United States but there is no mention of how she ended up in Cardiff and how, or if her family moved over to the US from the UK, in my opinion it just needed more information to bring everything together.
Reading through the chapters it all seemed a little bit rushed, having the clothes packed up to get rid of before the funeral seemed a little bit soon in my opinion and it just seemed as if everything was being rushed to get to Blake. It needed to be explained a little bit deeper rather than just glossed over.
I found some aspects of the story a little bit unbelievable, I’m not a very horsey person so not sure but I found it hard to believe that Blake would tie the suitcases to the back of the horse, did the horse just pull the cases down the road without them running into it or falling over.
I felt the use of the word Y’all was used too often and sometimes seemed to be in the wrong context in my opinion. I found that it was used in sentences where the word You’ll should have been used as the meaning of the word means you all and not you will. It was used far too often when Blake was only referring to LJ and it just didn’t seem to work with the rest of the sentences.
I also found it hard to believe that Sasha was 12, from the way she spoke to LJ calling her mama and referring to Carl as daddy made her sound so much younger. I thought kids grew out of speaking like that as they got older but maybe I’m wrong.
I don’t understand why there was such an issue with the age gap for it to keep being repeated throughout the book either. I understand when you’re younger 3 years can be an issue to some but at the ages of 33 and 36 it’s nothing or is it because it’s a woman that’s older than the man, it’s not like they’re kids anymore. For someone to call LJ a used up old cow and a cougar the age gap really needed to be more than 3 years it just didn’t work.
I can understand the writing of accents in the story due to them being Texans, but I found it was overdone and by the end of the book the word ya had just become annoying.
I also found it unbelievable that after her car accident she didn’t go to the hospital, she had a head injury and they were worried about a spinal injuries but then she was being transported back to the rodeo grounds on the back of a horse. What happened to the ambulance that Randy was supposed to be calling?
Although you could still understand what was being said or what was meant there were lots of little mistakes with the wording of some of the sentences that I felt the proof-reader or editor should have picked up on before the book was published
I pushed myself to read the entire book to see how it finished and to make sure I had all the complete story to be able to write this review. It was a nice enough story but wasn’t told very well I’m afraid.
I’m not saying don’t read it because everyone needs to make up their own minds and everyone’s tastes are different, but unfortunately this book didn’t speak to me or let me lose myself in the story and characters as much as some books do. I like to imagine what all the characters look like and imagine the surroundings in the scenes, but I found the booked lacked details on the people and the settings and just gave the basics therefore not really allowing my imagination to work, which is a shame because that can really bring a book to life and make it so much more enjoyable.
As I said it’s a nice story but needed a bit more depth and detail to make it all flow together better.
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