Casey works for the military, but after dismembering an abusive man in Saudi Arabia who her bosses wanted to look like a suicide, she has to be sent somewhere quiet until things blow over. The best plan her boss can come up with is a cattle ranch in Montana run by one of the doctors that helped make Casey. . .whatever she is. Human-lynx hybrid, I think. Except one of the doc's sons is a seething ball of rage who is coming off beating the shit out of his ex-wife, and has apparently concluded all women are terrible. Oh, and he's an ex-Navy SEAL, so a highly-trained, massive guy with anger issues. Awesome.
I got about 80 pages in before I set the book aside. The spelling issues - "teaming" instead of "teeming", "Paul Bunion" instead of "Paul Bunyan", being two of the more egregious - didn't help, but mostly there was something about the whole atmosphere of the ranch that felt strange.
It was one thing that Gabe's internal monologue describes all women as "bitches", and he doesn't exempt Casey from that, but is also very interested in her. Whether that interest is in twisting her head off her neck or making out with her seems unclear. And Casey is extremely wary of Gabe, but also protective of him when she overhears his brother badmouthing him.
But OK, that's going to be some "enemies to lovers," stuff. Not my bag, but always popular, although I had a bad feeling we were going to be told at some point Gabe's ex-wife did something to deserve being beaten by him. Like, he caught her cheating, so yeah, of course he whooped the shit out of her.
But every other guy on the ranch (minus the doc) is also hostile towards Casey, from the moment she arrives, for no particular reason. Casey had allegedly been there for months by the time I stopped reading. She did her work without complaint, didn't snap back against their verbal abuse or ridicule if she wasn't as good at driving fence posts as them, stayed out of their way, but there's no sign it's getting much better.
Nor is there any explanation for why all these cow punchers hate her so much from the word "go." Melvin delves into Gabe's thoughts, so we have some idea what's swirling around in that cesspool, but there's nothing like that for the others. So it comes off as Melvin needing to make them all horrible so that Gabe, who expresses concern by nearly killing one of the workers that mistreats Casey but is accusing her of stealing food five pages later, looks better by default.
'Gabe almost never interacted with anyone. Until Casey showed up. Since her arrival Gabe had been like a wild animal. . .territorial, hyperaggressive, and fiercely combative. Jacob just couldn't figure it out. Gabe went out of his way to not only have nothing to do with her, but to make sure no one else had anything to do with her either. Still, after everything that had just happened, Jacob was certain that no matter how much Gabe may hate Casey, he hated the idea of anyone hurting her even more.'
2 comments:
I like the idea of Paul Bunion, probably a D-list X-Man with the ability to grow bony spikes from his feet.
If I knew the book would pull out something like that, I might actually start reading it again. Needs an equivalent to Babe, the Big Blue Ox, though.
Lumberjack is to Big Blue Ox as Guy with bone spikes in his feet is to. . .?
Eh, the SATs were too long ago for this stuff.
Post a Comment