Review: The Cowboy Rescues a Bride – Cora Seton

The Cowboy Rescues a Bride by Cora Seton
Series: The Cowboys of Chance Creek #7
Published by One Acre Press on 29 May 2014
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance
Format: eARC
Source: Netgalley
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Ned Matheson is sharing a house with the woman he loves, but he can’t kiss her, or even touch her. In fact, she can barely look him in the face. He knows he needs to be patient; Fila Sahar has been to hell and back as a captive of the Taliban for over a decade. Now she’s safely back on American soil, but her fears hem her in so tightly, she might as well be a prisoner again. If he wants to marry her—or even date her—he’ll have to help her regain her courage. He thinks he’s found the perfect way for her to become a strong, independent woman—he’ll give her a restaurant of her very own to run.

Fila can’t believe she’s finally home, or that a handsome cowboy like Ned cares for her, but before she can give her heart to any man, she has to find the courage to stand on her own two feet. When Ned surprises her with his perfect solution—the restaurant he’s leased and renovated in her name—she’s overwhelmed—with fear, not gratitude. She can barely leave the house, let alone run a business. So when Ned’s father sends them out of town to check on the family’s remote hunting cabin, she’s grateful for the delay.

Ned knows his father hopes this trip will split them up, but he’s determined it will bring them together instead. When disaster strikes, all bets are off. Ned will learn what it’s like to be helpless. Fila will have to recover the courage she lost years ago.

Can they survive the weekend? Or will this trip be their last?

*I received a free ARC of The Cowboy Rescues a Bride from One Acre Press via Netgalley in exchange of an honest review*

The Cowboy Rescues a Bride shows a very different side to Fila than that seen in the prior Cowboys of Chance Creek series.

My The Cowboy Rescues a Bride review:

Unfortunately, I didn’t find Fila all that compelling or believable, and thus, The Cowboy Rescues a Bride is my least favorite book in this series. Ned, his brothers and their friends are always fun to visit with, but for part of the story, they weren’t around. Fila was a mystery in many ways, very contradicting most of the time. She would start crying when she was singing along to the radio, remembering her times with the taliban, when everything she was used to from growing up in the US was forbidden to her.

The Cowboy Rescues a Bride is a little misleading as a title, too, because strangely enough, Fila rescues Ned more than he rescues her. Yeah, he certainly helps her get her life back together, and to start working and be passionate about something once more, but Fila actually saves his life. This is one of those contradictions that is Fila, too. She can roll herself into a ball on the floor and cry because she was singing, but she has no problem hauling Ned’s unconscious form from a car into a cabin, in several feet of snow. And while I agree that we need to suspend our disbelief while reading, The Cowboy Rescues a Bride needed more than the usual dose of that.

The Cowboys of Chance Creek continues to be one of my favorite series, though, as it is well written, the friendships and relationships evolve over several books, and of course, it is filled with adoringly sexy cowboys! The Cowboy Rescues a Bride is not bad at all, but I did find myself wondering why Fila was so physically strong, when she had been captive for a long time, and then slowly getting back to her life in Chance Creek.

The actual relationship between Ned and Fila is very tender and respectful, though, and once more, one of the Matheson brothers has to fight his father so he can stay with the woman he loves. Good thing they’re all very stubborn and strong-minded, and have the support of their mom. I also found it very interesting that Ned is dyslexic, and he was working to learn how to read correctly in The Cowboy Rescues a Bride. I think that pointing out that dyslexic people are not stupid, and that they just need to learn with some other tools how to write is important – even in fiction.

Some of my favorite The Cowboy Rescues a Bride quotes:

Holt counted on things staying within a strict framework that he understood. Whatever was native to Chance Creek was good. Whatever was foreign to Chance Creek was bad. the more foreign it got, the worse it was to his way of thinking.

“Heroes aren’t people who are somehow unafraid in a crisis – heroes are the people who feel afraid and still do what needs to be done.” Ned watched her finish up. “I heard that over and over again when I was growing up, but I didn’t get it. Not until recently.” 

The pure darkness surrounding her reminded her of the mountain village she’d left behind with its absence of electricity. You could look out from the mountain and see nothing but blackness all around you.

 

 

 

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