Blog Tour | Review | A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch by Kay Ellington & Barbara Brannon

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Welcome to my stop of the blog tour for the book “A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch” by Kay Ellington & Barbara Brannon, hosted by Sage’s Blog Tours.

Let’s get on with the review, shall we? 🙂

Title: A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch (The Paragraph Ranch Series, Book 2)
Author: Kay Ellington & Barbara Brannon
Genre: Contemporary Women’s Fiction
Publishing date: 9th September, 2015
Published by: Booktrope Editions
Pages: 261
My Rating: 4/5 stars

Summary:

Can she piece together a dream on a shoestring?

As new owner of the falling-apart family homestead in West Texas, Dee Bennett is wrangling ways to earn a living, mend fences with farm and family, and manifest her dreams as a writer—all while nurturing the budding relationship with her beau, outdoorsy photographer Max Miller. But when a drop-dead-gorgeous, high-powered handler for a candidate in a key statewide election blows into Claxton, rivalries bigger than politics and football develop. With stakes running high on the campaign trail, as well as in publishing dreams and love lives, a Bennett family wedding must be attended to. And Dr. Dee, with the assistance of her motley writing-group protégés, must search her soul and fend off a host of challenges to live the life she just might learn to love.

My Take:

I liked this book. I really did. First, the cover called out to me, then I checked out the blurb and the first line, “Can she piece together a dream on a shoestring?” was enough to commit me into reading this book. A good decision! 🙂

I liked the main protagonist, Dee, right from the start. Man, that woman’s energy is contagious! 😉 She takes up reporting the ongoing elections, a job at the library, takes care of the notorious goats that were gifted to her and her daughter’s cat, works on the plan of preparing her ranch for an event organized by her cousin, holds writing meet ups at her place, and tries to give enough time to her outdoorsy boyfriend and her mother while having time-to-time phone call conversations with her daughter. 😀

I loved how Dee took one day at a time. An approach to life that I highly appreciate. 😀

From the start you get the idea that there’s a mystery in the book that is going to make it worth your time. It was going hand in hand with the story and with the way Dee tackled everything made it more realistic.

Though I didn’t feel that the title connects much with the story because a wedding occurs only in the start of the pages. That too is a thing that Dee just attends with no more involvement than attendance with the wedding, I found it a bit out of phase. There also is another wedding at the very end of the book. Although, throughout the book, before every chapter, pieces of wedding rituals are mentioned but I read that in haste to get to the interesting story continuation the chapters provided. I think those pieces worked as a hinderance to me. I am not saying that it isn’t good, it sure is but I would have liked to read it if the complete book was about wedding. It just felt irrelevant to me like all the wonderful stuff happening in the book were kind of getting overshadowed.

This is the second book in the Paragraph Ranch series, that might be the reason why I don’t get the title connection but it works well as a standalone too. 🙂

The setting, the characters, the dialog, everything is so well written that I just went on devouring page after page. 😀 Although, I didn’t care much about the political mentions I really enjoyed the book and those writing meet ups were so interesting, it provided with stories within the story. I would really have loved to be a part of that group. 😛