Sleeping Beauty Riff In Need of Caffeine | A Cowboy to Remember by Rebekah Weatherspoon

Title: A Cowboy to Remember
Series: Cowboys of California #1
Author: Rebekah Weatherspoon
Published: February 25, 2020
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 320
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

With a headline spot on a hit morning show and truly mouth-watering culinary skills, chef Evie Buchanan is perched on the edge of stardom. But at an industry party, a fall lands Evie in the hospital—with no memory of who she is. Scrambling to help, Evie’s assistant contacts the only “family” Evie has left, close friends who run the luxury dude ranch in California where Evie grew up. Evie has no recollection of them—until former rodeo champion Zach Pleasant walks into her hospital room, and she realizes his handsome face has been haunting her dreams . . .

Zach hasn’t seen Evie in years—not since their families conducted a campaign to make sure their childhood friendship never turned into anything more. When the young cowboy refused to admit the feelings between them were real, Evie left California, making it clear she never wanted to see Zach again. Now he refuses to make the same mistake twice. Starting fresh is a risk when they have a history she can’t recall, but Zach can’t bear to let go of her now. Can he awaken the sleeping beauty inside her who might still love him?

This cowboy-meets-Sleeping-Beauty romance is slow to start—like really slow to start—but once it finally gets going, it’s wonderful. It’s just too bad the point where the plot comes into its own is already two-thirds into the text. As a practical matter, having to slog through the majority of a novel to reach any sort of payoff is…not a great time.

Things kick off when aspiring restauranteur and famous TV chef Evie, gets pushed down a flight of stairs at an industry holiday party. Too bad she can’t remember a thing! Enter the three Pleasant brothers, who take Evie back to their ranch in Charming, California while she recuperates and tries to figure out her life. Also, apparently Evie and Zach Pleasant had a thing at some point? Maybe? Honestly, Evie has a lot more important things to figure out than her former self’s dating history…

A Cowboy to Remember is a novel that focuses primarily on the female main character and her personal growth/journey. The male lead, Zach, operates mostly as set dressing for his love interest’s larger arc. This is primarily because Evie has amnesia for 80% of the book. Whatever romance there is is largely subsumed by the overall narrative of her recovery and developing self-knowledge. I understand why this had to be; it’s difficult to have a meaningful romance when once person is, more or less, a completely empty canvas. But still. The first meaningful interaction between Zach and Evie doesn’t occur until 30 or 40% into the book—by which time many a reader might have set things aside to find a book where the promised love story is more central.

To put it bluntly: well over half of A Cowboy to Remember was massively boring. The supporting cast is huge (unnecessarily so), and most of the clunky and awkward first half of the text was spent sorting through everyone and their myriad relationships to the protagonists. I love that Weatherspoon wrote such a strong support network and community for her characters, but I wonder if there was a more graceful way to work them into the story, rather than massive info dumps that span for several chapters.

The most upsetting thing about all of this is that I know Rebekah Weatherspoon can do better. I’ve loved her writing in other books; I loved her writing in this book, once the ball finally got rolling. Who doesn’t love a second chance cowboy amnesia romance with an all-Black cast? It’s tropey and delicious, and it really could have gone somewhere.

Beyond that, I also wish that Evie’s success as one of the very few visible Black celebrity chefs in the industry had more of a chance to be part of the story. Towards the end of the story, she regains her memories and tries to step back into her former career—I thought that the drama resulting from that was far more interesting than anything that had come before. I would have read a whole book on that bit even without a love story involved (at that point in the story, Zach is still in California after a misunderstanding). Except the career-focused narrative only lasted for a single chapter, quickly read then gone. I understand why the story had to be the way it was, but honestly I just found that everything that happened while Evie had lost her memory was so dull, and reading about anything was a breath of fresh air.

All told, I’m mostly “meh” about A Cowboy to Remember. I think the amnesia plot-line put some heavy restrains on Weatherspoon’s ability to tell an engaging love story, and the story felt uneven and clunky as a result. I felt that all the pieces for an excellent romance were there, but somehow the execution was off. I wouldn’t read this a second time, but I might pick up the sequel.