Catastrophically Unbelievable | The Rancher and the City Girl by Kathy Douglass

Title: The Rancher and the City Girl
Series: Sweet Briar Sweethearts #3
Author: Kathy Douglass
Published: December 19, 2017
Genre(s): Romance: Contemporary
Page Count: 224
Rating:

Summary from Goodreads:

Wall Street hotshot Camille Parker is the last person rancher Jericho Jones expects to find on his doorstep. Ever since his late wife's best friend interfered in his marriage, she's persona non grata in Jericho's book. But the situation is literally life-and-death for this damsel in distress, and he opens his home to her. The problem is, he opens his heart, too.

Camille has no choice but to seek help from her worst enemy. And as she lets her guard down in close quarters, unexpected feelings surge for him. But what will happen if Camille's life goes back to normal and the city girl no longer needs to shelter in the reticent rancher's arms?

If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if an author of fluffy small town romances tried to write a novel with a major romantic suspense element, might I suggest looking at The Rancher and the City Girl as an example. (tl;dr: the result isn’t that great.) Overall, I felt that this book suffered from an unbelievable pairing and a stagnant plot. I’ve enjoyed Kathy Douglass’s books in the past, but this wasn’t her best.

First, the pairing. Rancher Jericho and corporate banker Camille first met at a reception hosted by Camille’s father’s law firm (don’t ask what a North Carolina rancher was doing at a fancy Chicago law firm, because there are no answers here). At the reception, Jericho fell in love with Camille’s best friend, Jeanette—who was engaged to Camille’s brother. After Jeanette dumped the brother, Jericho and Jeanette ran away to Las Vegas to get married. Camille was 5000% opposed to the relationship, and tried to convince Jeanette that her new partner was gold-digging trash out to marry a trust fund. This then culminated in Camille sneaking into Jericho’s Las Vegas hotel room on the night before the wedding and attempting to seduce him—in order to run to her best friend with “proof” that Jericho really was trash. This didn’t work, and instead, Jeanette broke off the relationship with Camille entirely.

Now Jeanette is dead, and the author wants me to buy into a Jericho/Camille pairing? NOPE. In what freaking world would this man marry his dead wife’s ex-BFF who tried to frame him as a philanderer? Haha, no. And now Camille ends up with the same man who “stole” away her brother’s fiancée? Family gatherings sure are gonna be awkward from now on. Yikes. (Please note: I am not saying that Camille didn’t deserve love or that she was a bad person; we don’t believe in misogynistic blame-games here.)

Listen. I can deal with many things, but this relationship is just not one that I’m going to get behind. It’s unrealistic in an extreme that I simply couldn’t look past.

But wait! If you’re wondering why Camille even managed to meet up again with Jericho, considering the fact that they hate each other’s guts and live in different states, boy do I have a tale for you. See, Camille uncovers a money laundering scheme and gets in touch with the FBI. One day, she overhears her boss telling someone to kill her and make it look like an accident, so she gets the hell outta Dodge and goes straight to Jericho’s ranch in North Carolina (since she doesn’t want to put anyone she actually likes in danger). Miraculously, Jericho believes her story about being on the run from random money laundering assassins, and he lets her stay in his guest room.

And that’s it! That’s the entire freaking plot: Camille hanging out at Jericho’s ranch and doing ranch-y things such as riding horses, hiking in the woods, and sipping hot cocoa. Camille never tells anyone that she’s in danger; we never see any evidence that there are people on her tail; nothing. No attempt is made to formulate any kind of plan beyond “oh hey, I guess I’ll just live on this ranch and survive off of this stranger’s charity for an indefinite period of time.” Then one day, Camille sees on the news that her boss has been arrested for the aforementioned money laundering, and that’s it. Case closed.

I just…authors. You do not get to introduce a “woman in danger / damsel in distress” trope without doing something with it. Here, Camille believing her life was in danger looked suspiciously like awkward authorly machinations to get her in proximity with Jericho. The entirety of The Rancher and the City Girl felt like a massive Chekhov’s gun, in novel form. I’m sure the scenes where Camille and Jericho were bonding over mucking out horse stalls were adorable, but I was so freaking annoyed that it wasn’t worth it.

Kathy Douglass writes lovely small town contemporary romances, and there’s probably a way she could have blended that genre with the elements of a more traditional romantic suspense. Unfortunately, this book wasn’t it. And because I found it extremely implausible that the protagonists would even give each other the time of day, I didn’t have the main couple to root for while reading, either. The Rancher and the City Girl fell flat, with style.