Recent Read

Defiant by Patricia Potter

Why this one:  I’m still into the Western

Steam Level: Warm

Genre: Western

My Thoughts: The length of time it took me to read this book should not affect the grade.  Even though it took several weeks, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.  The main problem was I have it on my KOBO app and that app keeps crashing on me, then I get frustrated and stick more with Kindle or Ibooks.

This is a reread of a book I first read years ago and it was so long ago I only vaguely remember it so bonus for me.  This is the story of Mary Jo Williamson, her son Jeff and Wade Foster.

Mary Jo is the widow of a Texas Ranger.  She was being courted by another Texas Ranger who was killed in action.  He left her a ranch in Colorado and she decided to try her hand at ranching.  But she’s been running into difficulties as no one wants to work for a woman.  She and Jeff are struggling along when Jeff comes across a stranger almost dead.  They bring him home, patch him up and though he comes across as rather a tough hombre, she asks if he would be willing to stay and help for a few months, long enough to hire some hands and get things up and running.

But Wade wants no part of it.  He has a tragic past and he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies and the last thing he wants to do is get tangled up with the young widow he has a very strong attachment to and her hero worshiping son.  His family were murdered by Jayhawkers years before and as a result he joined the Bushwhackers and in time was just as bad.  But he’d had enough after the infamous attack in Centralia and headed to the mountains to get away from all society.  He met and became friends with the Ute Indian tribe to the point of marrying a young woman and becoming a father.  But his wife and son are murdered and he spends the next couple of years tracking down the ones who murdered them and making sure they would never kill again.  He finally tracked down the last of them and before he shot and killed the last thug, Wade was shot himself.

This is the point he was at when he was found by Jeff.  He has little interest in even living now that he has finished his mission of revenge.  All he really wants is to go away somewhere.  But he has no means of leaving as his horse was shot and he is in such bad shape himself.  Eventually he has no choice to agree to Mary Jo’s offer.  He wants to stay aloof but he can’t.  The attraction between he and Mary Jo only grows and he’s very drawn to Jeff after losing his own son so tragically.

I sound like a broken record with so many books, I know, but dang I enjoyed this book.  Wade was the strong, silent, Clint Eastwood or hello, Scott Eastwood type. 

 He really isn’t a bad man, but a good man who was drawn into bad things and hated himself for it.  He’s the perfect Western hero and a good example of why I adore this genre.

Mary Jo is a good heroine.  She’s tough and strong and not afraid to go after what she wants – like Wade.

And Ms. Potter also writes them good and gritty.  Not quite as much as Rosanne Bittner, but very true to life I think.  I’ve got a number of her backlist now as ebooks and there are a few more I really hope come out as ebooks sooner rather than later *cough - Notorious and Renegade – cough*

 I’m still in a big Western phase though I have read a few contemporaries in between that I’ve enjoyed.  But I keep being drawn back to the strong, silent, working class with a bit of a bad boy, Western hero and I’m quite happy to live there for a while longer.

I just started another older Western book by her, Diablo and I only vaguely remember it either.  I’m barely into it but it’s bringing back good feelings.

 Grade: 4 out of 5

 

Would I read it again?  I already have and I would again.

 

'til later

 

Recent Movie

 

I don’t do a lot of these ‘cause I don’t go to the movies very often, only about once or twice a year.  It’s not so much the price of the movie that keeps me from seeing more –it’s the cost of the pop and popcorn.  One simply can not go to a movie without getting them and when the charge more for the popcorn than they do for the movie – POPCORN for pete’s sake – well, I boycott the movies unless it’s a special occasion or a movie I can’t wait to come out on DVD (notice I don’t say Neflix – I’ve no idea how that works really)

Such was the case yesterday, my day off from working the weekend,  when I went to see The Longest Ride – it was both.  A neighbor took me as a long delayed birthday present and – hello – Scott Eastwood.

 

So about this

 I may be old but I’m surely not dead.  Scott Eastwood – hello – (sorry – I just can’t type his name without the hello added to it)plays the role of Luke Collins a cowboy and bull rider.  He suffered a deadly injury and shouldn’t be bull riding anymore but he’s a stubborn one and is mounting a comeback on the bull riding circuit.  He meets Sophia Danko an art student at the local college when she and a bunch of her sorority sisters head to the local rodeo even though initially she doesn’t really want to go.  Their eyes meet when he’s bucked off a bull and his hat is knocked off and she hands it to him and he tells her to keep it.  They meet up again at the local watering hole and can we say – SPARKS FLY.  Heck, even I thought her gorgeous and sweet and wished we could hang together.  The only thing keeping me from developing a deeper girl crush was hello- Scott Eastwood.  Sophia is reluctant to get involved though as she has her life planned out and that means she is leaving the college in a couple of months to take an internship in New York City and any potential relationship would be so hard to maintain.  But she does agree to go out with him and can I just say that EVERY GIRL should have that kind of first date.  Talk about romantic.  And when this really hot cowboy – hello – Scott Eastwood –

is walking across this university campus – well, my heart went pitty pat.

There is such a real connection but again – timing sucks.  They are on their home from the date and it’s pouring rain when Luke spies something on the side of the road and discovers there was an accident.  Ira Levinson, played brilliantly by Alan Alda is rescued by Luke and Sophia but he also wants a box saved.  When he gets to the hospital, Sophia wants to stay to make sure he’s OK (see – girl crush).  When he wakes she shows him the box of letters she’s saved but he’s too old and his sight too bad to read them so she begins reading them and thus begins a series of flashbacks of a young Ira and his love Ruth and their story set in the 1940’s.  The actors who played a young Ira and a young Ruth were perfectly cast, especially I think Oona Chaplin who played Ruth.   It was sweet and tender and sad and it really added a lot to the movie.  I didn’t realize it going it, but this is actually a two story movie, half of it between Luke and Sophia and who they can overcome their difficulties and half between Ira and Ruth and overcoming their difficulties.  It’s sad in places, real sad in a couple, but it does have a very good happy ending.  A coworker had seen it and recommended it to me.  I asked her if it had a happy ending – not how it ended or that I wouldn’t see it if it didn’t –just that if it wasn’t a happy ending I needed to brace myself.  And myself didn’t need bracing so that’s a good thing for the romance lover in me.  The love scenes in this movie *sigh* well – I have a mood calendar at my desk that I change every day depending on how I’m feeling when I come into work.  Today I chose Addled and showed my coworker who recommended the movie.  Even though she’s just newly married, she got it – heh, heh, heh.

This is another Nicolas Sparks movie.  I’ve never read his books – and don’t intend to start, but I’ve seen some of his movies and they can be quite wonderful.  I liked the Notebook, have Safe Harbor downloaded in my Ipad though I haven’t watched it yet and LOOVVEDD The Lucky One – very romantic and who doesn’t find Zac Ephron easy on the eyes – though not as easy as- hello- Scott Eastwood.

I think part of my fascination with Scott is he‘s the son of Clint Eastwood and my oh my did I have a crush on him when I was just a young thing and he played Rowdy Yates, the strong silent type cowboy on Rawhide.  Combined with the awesomeness of the theme song, it was a great show for its time and helped lead me to my lifelong love of Westerns.  And after a brief sojourn into other genres, I’m back with the westerns.  Back in the days of Rawhide, believe it or not you young’uns, TV was black and white so we didn’t get to see the piercing blue eyes of the Eastwood men, but oh my stars were they on full display in The Longest Ride (and let’s not even get started on the PERFECT chest with PERFECT manly chest hair.)

For me, this was the PERFECT romance movie and I’ll be getting a copy as soon as I can when it comes out.  I think it’s almost finished it’s run with all the summer movies coming out, but if not, I urge the romantic in everyone to check this movie out.  It gets a very, very well deserved and hearty thumbs up from me.

 

 

And one more for the road – hello- Scott Eastwood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'til later