Love Is a War Song

Love Is a War Song by Danica Nava, 336 pages

After rising pop star Avery Fox gets cancelled for her culturally insensitive use of Native American imagery, her mom/manager sends her off to the Muscogee reservation in Oklahoma to learn about her heritage at her estranged grandmother's house, where she can also conveniently avoid the paparazzi. Avery's definitely interested in meeting her grandmother, who she's never met and her mother never talks about, but she certainly isn't prepared for life on the reservation or working hard at her grandmother's horse ranch. She also isn't prepared for Lucas, the ridiculously hot and aloof ranch hand who seems to hate her from the moment he picks her up at the airport.

While this book is filled with plenty of the traditional romance tropes, its setting in a Native American community and discussion of ignorance and cultural insensitivity is fresh. That said, I can't say I totally loved the book — I have plenty of quibbles with the way things played out toward the end of the book, and I'm sure there are better ways to handle the PR nightmare that spurs the storyline. But it is a fresh backdrop, and I'll definitely be checking out more of Nava's books.

142 Ostriches

142 Ostriches / April Davila, 262 pgs.

Tallulah Jones lived an itinerant life-style with her young mother until she turned 13 and her grandmother picked her up. Her grandmother was an ostrich rancher in the desert.  Now an adult, Tallulah makes plans to leave home and start a career in Montana. When her grandmother dies in a car accident, the dysfunctional family comes our in full force.  An enjoyable story but somehow didn't have the "edge" that I was looking for.  I didn't feel invested enough in Tallulah and her life to recommend this one.

The 27*Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders

The 27*Ingredient Chili Con Carne Murders by Nancy Pickard (based on characters and a story created by Virginia Rich) (1993) 296 pages

Mrs. Eugenia Potter is the widowed owner of a cattle ranch in southern Arizona very near the Mexican border. While staying in Maine for a few weeks, she receives a call from Ricardo, the manager of her ranch, asking her to return immediately, but when she returns the next day, she learns that he and his granddaughter Linda are both missing, having left their home on horseback in the middle of the night. Added to this concern is that Mrs. Potter doesn't know why she was summoned back – Ricardo wouldn't tell her over the phone because of the party line in their small town.

Based on some notes Ricardo left in her house, Mrs. Potter feels more and more sure that Ricardo and Linda were the victims of foul play rather than an accident. There are plenty of suspects: neighboring ranch owners as well as those who work on the various ranches.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Potter learns that Jed, her college sweetheart from forty years ago, is staying at a fancy dude ranch nearby while in the area on business. Jed's presence is a unexpected surprise in the midst of her worries, making Mrs. Potter wonder whether Jed wants to re-establish a relationship.

I had my pet suspects, but as usual, Pickard (and Rich) fooled me. The thorough details sometimes seem more than needed, but they set the stage quite well.

The Tin Star / J.L. Langley

The Tin Star by J.L. Langley. 290 p.

Ethan's best friend John comes over to Ethan's ranch, The Tin Star, with news that Jamie, John's little brother, has been kicked off their father's ranch because he told his father he was gay. Ethan, who's gay but not out except to his close friends (like John), thinks Jamie was foolish to come out because life will be tough in ranch country and their small Texas town for an openly gay cowboy. He offers Jamie a job at the Tin Star. Once Jamie arrives, Ethan realizes that he's very attracted to Jamie, and they start up a romance. In between sex scenes they try to figure out who's harassing them, damaging property and eventually shooting Ethan.

This is pretty much pure fluff--not that there's anything wrong with that. I had a terrible time taking the dialogue seriously; I don't have the book here to quote from, but there's lots of "boy howdy" cowboy-isms sprinkled throughout. Then again, I've never met a cowboy in person; it's possible that the speech patterns are accurate, and they just sound like a goofy cliche to me because of my ignorance. I was a bit more thrown by the plot; at the beginning of the book Ethan strongly believes that coming out in his situation would just be foolish and make managing his ranch more difficult, so I would expect it to be a bigger deal when he decides to do it later in the book. Yet it reads almost like an afterthought. Similarly, the harassment that Jamie and Ethan undergo didn't really seem menacing; it was just plot to fill the space between love scenes. I didn't expect serious realism or anything, but the tone seemed a little too facile to suit me.

Overall, my dabbling in the male/male romance arena wasn't terribly successful--the first (Lovers' Knot) didn't have enough romance and the second (PsyCop: Partners) didn't have enough detail about the plot or the romance. This one was closest to what I'd consider a good romance in the erotica category, but it was a bit too goofy for me. Then again, if I picked three random titles off a list of ten het romances, I'm not sure I'd have any better odds of finding on that I really liked.