Bree M Lewandowski, $2.99, ISBN 979-8201619336
Contemporary Romance, 2021

While this story has an official synopsis that suggests that it is a second chance romance between rancher Rhett and city gal Cassandra, the bulk of this story is about Rhett running around managing the bazillion things that need his attention in his ranch.

Sure, I suppose it can function as a cautionary tale for city women to think hard before marrying a hot cowboy, but… well, let me get straight to the point. 

Bree M Lewandowski’s Saratoga Roan has one major issue: everything is told in short, staccato active sentences. 

Therefore, not only does all that telling and no showing results in distancing me from the characters, the whole story ends up being one long exposition dump, punctuated by short and terse dialogues here and there. The whole thing makes for a rather dull read because there is no variation in the sentence structure and style, so everything feels monotonous and non-engaging. 

Also, the author mixes up her characters’ points of view, so that a paragraph from one character’s perspective can easily jump to the next character’s and back again, or just go into the omnipresent narrator’s perspective instead. The result can be a disorientating read.

Even if it wasn’t a smart move on her part, she’d make the best of a dumb decision. The house could be a disaster; her things were in storage. It might take time to find an apartment. The money left in the will, plus her own savings, was cushion enough. She was back, back where she should have always been, and intended now to stay. Whether Rhett was part of her future or not.

Anger, hurt, desire, and shock had hardened his eyes and locked his jaw. Little doubt lingered in her mind a part of him still cared. The doubt came with whether he wanted her love again.

The author’s style also makes the dramatic moments of the story feel like stubs in an incomplete wiki entry.

On the ride to the airport, during the flight, over and over again as she drove up the road to Saratoga Ranch, she told herself that whatever storm and thunder got thrown her way, she was going to take.

She had left him ugly. No break-up. No attempt to talk. Within hours of their fight, she sat on a plane. Right before takeoff, she had blocked Rhett’s number. That had been it. She couldn’t take his hot and cold anymore. A man doesn’t kiss a woman, turn her body into flames, and then not take her to bed.

So, she took her sexual frustration and threw it back in his face. She wasn’t enough to sleep with? Then she wasn’t anything at all.

Except she was still the woman who loved him. However, proof of that wouldn’t come with her merely walking into the stables.

Whoa, can you feel the intensity of this scene, people?

Also, the events in the above excerpt are just plopped into the story just like that, out of the blue. The author is just dumping a whole lot of events on me in just four short paragraphs and somehow expect them to translate into an intense scene.

It’s a shame that the whole thing reads like a cold and impersonal transcription because there are many things here that can appeal to readers of old school romances that feature super hard and even cruel heroes and heroines that actually love it when these men are being terrible to them.

Okay, cruel assholes and the women that love them are something I don’t personally enjoy reading under normal circumstances, but the story has plenty of melodramatic elements, right down to the hero screaming and falling onto the ground at the penultimate moment, to provide unintentional comedy and appeal to the fan of overwrought melodrama in me… had the story been written in a more interesting manner.

Another thing: the reason of their initial break-up is one that is rarely touched upon in the romance genre, so it’s really a bloody damn shame that this story is written in such a robotic manner.

So yes, in the end, I just can’t get into this thing to either loathe it with the intensity of a hundred suns or enjoy it for its campy overtones, because the author’s writing style just wouldn’t let me. Maybe another time.