The Cowboy Takes a Bride (Jubilee, Texas Book 1)

When Mariah Callahan learns she’s inherited her estranged father’s ranch in Jubilee, Texas, she figures she has nothing more to lose by going to check the place out. After all, she’s lost her job as a wedding planner in Chicago through no fault of her own and hasn’t been able to find another job.When she arrives in Jubilee, she finds that things aren’t quite what she was expecting, and her first thought is to turn around and run back to Chicago. Her first meeting with her neighbor, Joe Daniels, isn’t love at first sight. Both have issues to deal with. Both are suffering from loss and heartache in their own way. The more Mariah gets to know Joe and the residents of Jubilee, the more she comes to care for them all. Is there a chance she could find happiness here in Jubilee?

Spring is in the air (actually, it is more like summer, with unseasonal highs in the 80s), so I have been reading a ton of romance. I had very good luck with Entangled Publishing’s Indulgence line, which was helmed, briefly, by Lori Wilde. After she was offered a contract with HarperCollins, she stepped down to devote her time and energy to writing. When The Cowboy Takes a Bride, the first of her Jubilee, Texas series, hit store shelves, I couldn’t resist snapping it up. I love cowboys and horses, so this book had my name written all over it. I had a mixed reading experience, partly because I do love horses, though.Mariah Callahan is an down on her luck unemployed wedding planner. When she discovers that her estranged father left her a ranch in Jubilee, Texas, she has no choice but to drive from Chicago to check the place out. Three months of job hunting has left her in precarious financial straits, so discovering that she’s inherited a house is the answer to her prayers. Until she sees the ramshackle cabin and meets the surly cowboy who lives next door. Now she just wants to sell the dump and get on with her life, but can she resist Jubilee’s small town charms?I loved the start of this book. Mariah, exhausted after driving from Chicago to Texas, discovers a naked cowboy in what she believes is her horse trough. Only it isn’t her ranch she’s stopped at, it’s Joe Daniels, her father’s good friend and business partner. Joe isn’t impressed when he finally meets Dutch’s daughter, and he thinks she is heartless for turning her back on her father. What Joe doesn’t realize is that Dutch abandoned Mariah and her mother, and her childhood was spent moving from one wealthy household to another, as her mother, a domestic servant, struggled to raise her alone. Mariah is bitter and resentful that Dutch dumped her and her mother so he could train cutting horses, and now that he’s dead, there is no hope of reconciliation. She’s also resentful that Dutch treated Joe like a son, while she didn’t receive any scraps of his attention.The first half of the book drew me in and kept me engaged in the story. I love small town settings, and Jubilee, despite all of the drama, seemed like a peaceful place to set down some roots. I could understand Dutch’s attraction to the town. The cutting capital of the world, it was immediately clear why he drifted there in the first place. With big dreams to win big money with his horses, he needed to be right in the heart of cutting horse country. After selling a promising prospect to Joe, he even had a place to call home, dilapidated as it was. I could see the old cowboy living in the battered cabin, finally being content enough to try to plant some roots. Unfortunately, an unexpected illness put an end to his dreams.Joe is devastated by Dutch’s death, which occurred two years to the day after the death of his wife in a riding accident. Joe is suffering, reeling from the loss of the two people he loved most. He doesn’t understand the chip on Mariah’s shoulder; nor can he understand that she’s not openly mourning Dutch’s death. While Mariah is cool and reserved, and not about to wear her heart on her sleeve, Joe is more open with his feelings. Everyone knows he is suffering, and the small community bands together to keep on eye on him. When Mariah arrives in town, she, too, finds the community welcoming and caring. At first put off by their interest in her, she discovers that being neighborly, something didn’t get much of in Chicago, isn’t a bad thing. I found that the various secondary characters helped keep the plot moving, and helped to ground Mariah.What I didn’t like, and where the plot started falling apart for me, were all of the references to Sleepless in Seattle and the long winded dialogs when Joe and Mariah started opening up and sharing their feelings with each other. I just didn’t find the conversations interesting, and the emotions fell flat for me because of that. The tension between them seemed to evaporate. Mariah kept holding Joe’s love for his horses over his head, too, even though he proved, time and again, that he was nothing like her father. To be complete, Joe needed roots and someone to share his dreams with, but Mariah refused to believe in him or the promises that he offered to her. It just frustrated me that she wouldn’t give him the chance he deserved, and so her lack of trust in him felt forced to me.Grade: C+

The Cowboy Takes A Bride by Lori WildeMariah Callahan inherited her father's ranch and she learns about this from Joe Daniels. Her mom had left Mexico with her when her father didn't come home one night-for weeks on end. She left to take a job with a family in Illinois.She is a wedding assistant and has arrived at the ranch, first mistaking Joe's ranch as hers. She meets up with Clover who used to with her husband watch her grow up when she was an infant.Love the inspiration quotes at the beginning of every chapter from Dutch.Love how she walks through the buildings and remembers things her dad told her about horses, cutting horses and saddles, etcThe sense of community with everyone who's in the co-op and makes it work.Joe Daniels shows up to get Miracle to enter them into a race to maybe win 400 hundred thousand in cash. He will follow her to the lawyers and trade her car in. The relapse of his drinking bout the previous night left him with no pants on but his boots in the horse trough. He had buried his wife and then weeks later, his best friend Dutch.She's agreed to sell him back the ranch, she wants to hightail it outta Jubilee, TX for Chicago and to start up her own wedding business. But she has to wait til Dec. when he can win the race before he can pay her. So she's gonna settle in for a few months.There are other friends of Joe's who carry on romantically...Nariah had a few choices, take the money and leave or take the job at the bar for a few months time...She's always had the dream to have her own wedding business and with others help from the co-op it may become a reality.Death, hot steamy sex, barn weddings, and fire all play a part in this book...She has to make a choice when she's offered three times her original salary, but she'd have to do the job in Chicago...Excerpt from next in the series: the cowboy and the princess

oe Daniels is a cutting horse cowboy and he's in a bad way. Two years ago his wife died and just yesterday Dutch died. Dutch was his mentor and also his best friend. Now he is lost with both of them gone. Dutch was well known and very loved in Jubilee, Texas. He left his land and cabin to his daughter Mariah. Dutch left her mother when Mariah was very young. He had a one track mind and it was set on horses. He figured his family would be better off without him.....but he never forgot Mariah.Mariah lives in Chicago and works as a wedding event planner and she is very good at her job....until she gets fired. Then she gets blackballed and can't get any kind of job in Chicago. When things can't get any bleaker she receives notice that she has inherited Dutch's property. With nothing to lose she packs up all her things and moves to Jubilee. Mariah is a city girl in designer clothes and shoes and sorely sticks out amongst the locals. Joe lives next door and their initial meeting isn't all peaches and cream. They start off like water and oil....but does it stay that way? I loved every minute of this book and hated for it to end. Now go get your copy and read it. You won't be sorry.