Check out my review and two teasers here: http://frommetoyouvideophoto.blogspot.com/2012/04/disappointmentville-cowboys-of... ( )

Laura is a woman who left town ten years ago because her fiancé couldn’t/wouldn’t let her in. He wouldn’t share his overwhelming grief over the murder of his parents. I did and didn’t like Laura. I could see postponing the wedding. But canceling and then leaving the country? Yes, she was young when she left. Now let’s jump to ten years later. She’s back in town after a tragedy in her life. Laura returns home to her mother along with her two children. She’s grown in some ways and not in others. I got aggravated with her continuing to call Taft out on being a player. Um, not for a while now and she was out of the country and married! I’m not saying the failure of the engagement wasn’t on both shoulders, just that she is the one who called it off and left. I did sympathize with Laura. Taft is the love of her life and she felt left and rejected even before she left. The things she has to deal with after her return to the States wasn’t easy and to deal with the past and past hurts didn’t help. Laura tries to avoid Taft at all costs. Needless to say that doesn’t work. She resists him and he keeps pursuing, until he figures there’s no hope.

Taft is really a great guy that has been through hell in his life. His parents were murdered and he didn’t know how to deal with it other than to act tough and pretend it didn’t affect him. Of course that just ate him up from the inside out and changed who he was. In the end he lost Laura before he found himself again. Taft goes through ten years without her or commitment to anyone else. When Laura returns home and he runs into her again he’s poleaxed. It doesn’t take him long to realize he still loves her and has fallen for her children. He does everything he can to convince her that he will never hurt her again. He shares himself/his feelings and admits what he did wrong in the past. Taft can’t figure out how to convince Laura he isn’t really a player. He puts himself out there until he thinks it’ll never work. This is when tragedy strikes again forcing Laura to rethink her views and face the fact that she still does and always has loved Taft. The question is what she will do about it.

This was a pretty good read. It’s a romance that’s paced a bit slow, but that wasn’t a bad thing in this case. I liked that there wasn’t someone in danger, being chased or on someone’s “hit list”. I would recommend this for anyone looking for a sweet romance or easy/relaxing read.
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By far the worst part of this book was the heroine. Everything she said I wanted to kick her in the head. I really don't understand the narrative of this book positioning her as sympathetic or the aggrieved party. I mean, is it just me: Ten years ago, after years of being friends then lovers, Lauren and Taft were set to get married. A week before the wedding she broke off the engagement and took off for Madrid. For some reason he agreed to say it was a mutual decision.

Turns out, six months prior his parents had been brutally murdered in their home. He was having a hard time dealing with his grief so he closed up. Went to the bar a lot, apparently flirted with girls there. He never did anything with them. Lauren got mad that he shut her out and wouldn't postpone the wedding and that's why she broke up with him. At this point I was put out with her. Everything she was saying was that she was pissed at him for not making his grief about her. To her it was about what she wanted and wasn't getting and so she broke his heart on top of everything else and ran away.

Then later she reveals through her POV, with some "not that he ever shared this with her" snide whining, that it wasn't just that his parents were murdered. He came home right after it happened, saw his father dead and his mother bleeding to death on the floor. When the paramedics arrived he was covered in his mother's blood from giving her CPR, but she couldn't be revived.

ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! He went through that and within six months you ditch him all because he didn't make it about you?! You couldn't give him more time than that? That just screamed "heartless bitch" to me. At some point she said if he were willing to postpone the wedding she might have stuck around. So she put her foot down and broke up with him, but didn't put her foot down about the wedding? What the hell?

She even says she knew he was angry, bitter, and lost in deep grief. And it never occurred to her that maybe he closed up to protect her from his anger and the horror of what he'd been through. It doesn't sound like she tried to help him, or get through to him. Just expected him to know what she wanted and left when he didn't give it to her. She called herself silly and naive then, that she was stupid to believe in love, and he broke her heart. Never once was it brought up what she did to him. Not once. How it must have been for him lost in that grief and losing the love of his life. And for some reason he kept apologizing and feeling guilty about the past and she never once did. She was painted as the victim. Especially because once she left him and the country he started drowning his grief and heartbreak in women. Something that she kept using against him like a spear throughout the book. Saying stupid things like she can't trust him with her and her kids because he'll decide he doesn't want it again, and miss his partying lifestyle. What the hell? Just, what? When they see each other again she starts out being nasty to him, and continues. He's nothing but sweet to her and the kids and she's just rude and mean. She was the victim, right. Of course. He said he should have gone after her when she left but he wasn't the man he is now then or something like that. And I was like, no, you were in the throes of profound grief and not in the right place to know what to do. That wasn't on you. But she says, 'yeah, if you had even called or emailed I would have come right back.' What? OH, MY GOD. SHUT UP.

And I hate that he stuck to that "mutual decision" lie. I really wanted his family on his side. Not one person in this book was on his side. That made me even madder.

Lauren kept saying how she was weak and pathetic then. She was, but not in the way she thinks. Quite frankly her shitty marriage was karma for the way she treated Taft. She got knocked up by a guy she didn't love, and married him anyway, then had another kid. He kept things from her like she accused Taft of doing and why she left him, except Javier did it for everything. Including all his women on the side. She said a few times that she never loved him, even once wondered if she had tried harder to love him he wouldn't have run around with all those other women and he'd still be alive (he died while boating with one of them). Then, when she suddenly realized she loves Taft and never stopped she was all, 'I loved Javier. Of course I did. I wouldn't have married him otherwise.' What?! Since when?? That was a 180 degree turnaround from what she was saying before. She doesn't know what she's talking about or what she feels. She's not stronger or smarter. She's just as stupid as the girl who ran out on her fiancé when he needed her most because it wasn't easy and about her. I don't remember the last time I hated a heroine this much.

I liked Taft, but he made me mad because he took all the blame for the past on himself and in my opinion he shouldn't have. He took all her unwarranted anger and the unearned barbs she threw at him, and all I wanted to do was yell at him to find someone worthy of his love. I didn't get why he felt anything for her.

And then in the end it skips over them reconnecting in any way. She pushes him away, is nasty to him, and does her best hurt him any way she can no matter how sweet he is, so there was never any of them getting to know the people they are now. But that all changes based on an over the top situation She leaves the kids alone by the creek for a minute and they fall in, Taft risks his life, against all protocol, to save them. Then, of course, she loves him without reservation and they can be together. Cue my heavy sighs and eye rolls.

The character I liked most was little Maya. This was probably one of the best treatments of a kid with Downs Syndrome I've read. It wasn't continually brought up, she was treated as any other child. Though I didn't like the couple of times Laura referred to her as "fragile" and "vulnerable", but like I said, everything she said made me want to harm her. Especially after she used it as a reason to tear into Taft when he was going on about how adorable and lovable Maya is. "Don't you pity her!" Uh, he wasn't. He was loving her. Idiot.

I really wish the backstory between Taft and Laura had been different and she hadn't been so awful. I liked the rest of the book enough to have wanted to like the story. ( )

A Cold Creek Reunion The Cowboys at Cold Creek BY RaeAnne Thayne
read 2/27 pub March 20, 2012
ISBN: 9780373656615
Taft Bowman is the local fire department chief and when he and his crew showed up to put out the fire at the local hotel he was surprised to see Laura Santiago there.
She had left the town and her wedding a week before it was to happen, to Taft ten years ago, she married Javiera andshe was back in town cuz he had died and she had no money left and she could help
her mom at the hotel at the same time as she was getting on in years.
They are now friends and Laura is invited to the ranch to visit with Caidy, Taft's sister and the kids love the animals there to play with and to pet.
Taft shows up for a horseback ride so they get to spend more time together.
He is living at the inn while he does some carpentry work, after the fire for them for room and board for a while.
Typical small town life: fires, drownings, BBQ's, horseback riding into the mountains, peaceful scenery, running an inn,

Short story: Anniversary is also included and it's written by many authors.
Abby and Melissa are throwing their parents an anniversary party but they think it's just a get together.
Mother Diana is so worried one of her daughters is breaking up and that the other is pregnant and she loves the drama but she's
got it all wrong, as usual.
The theme is Italian as that is where her parents had first honeymooned at as they talk about things that happened on the trip
the first time they were in Italy.
There are other gifts in store for them all. ( )

This book had a lot of potential and while it was pretty good and did keep me reading it, it just didn't seem to quite deliver all I was hoping for.

Laura and Taft had been engaged once--ten years earlier, when both were probably too young to truly make such a decision. Taft, two years older, had been Laura's crush since seventh grade. They were good friends until they were both out of school, when they became more.

Six months before their planned wedding, Taft's family suffered a major trauma. Everyone deals with devastating grief in their own way, and Taft's way was to pretend everything was fine on the surface (of course the wedding should go on as planned! No need to postpone!) while pushing everyone close to him away--including Laura, of course--and drowning his sorrows at the local bar. Just before the wedding, Laura left him, running off to Madrid. By the time Taft finally had his act together, Laura had already married someone else.

Fast forward ten years--Laura's lying, cheating, scum of a husband is dead and she's brought her two children back home to help her mother run the family inn. Taft, now the fire chief, is temporarily staying at the inn in exchange for free carpentry work (his rental agreement is up on his apartment, but the house he's building isn't quite ready yet.) The two are constantly thrown together, and of course Laura's children are just as charmed by Taft as he is with them. All is good, right? They just have to let go of the past and agree to go forward, then?

And after some initial "we're going to avoid each other like the plague" moments, it seems like they're going to. Taft and Laura talk. They admit they were too young and hadn't dealt with the situation as well as they should have. Except wait--no, Laura's still going to blame Taft for being a player, even though he hasn't done a single thing since she's been back to hold up that theory. Ah, and then she's going to hold up the "I can't let my kids get too involved, they've already been disappointed by their father" card. Argh. What could have been a nice, sweet story of love redeemed becomes a bit confused as Laura seemingly takes ten giant steps back in their relationship for no apparent reason other than her sudden fear that Taft will turn out to be just like her dead husband. What followed was pretty frustrating to read for a while, since her digging in of her heels just didn't make much sense to me. She finally comes around--VERY quickly--and we have the expected HEA. It just seemed like it could have happened about fifty pages earlier, to be honest--less painful for everyone involved. ( )