Single Girl Lit - Reviewed November 2009

This book is a little bit older than those we’ve been reading but we’d read some other novels by Lou Wakefield in the past and thought this one looked like fun! I really enjoyed this mystery/single girl lit and it’s one I would read it again if it ever came my way.

I found the story to be unique, which is definitely challenging with chick lit these days. The heroine, Kate, is not your typical girl looking for a man but more of a girl looking for escape. She decides to up and get on a plane to Canada to help to someone she’s never met in person, just in a backgammon gaming site on the net. A somewhat risky venture I would have thought! However, when she ends up on the doorstep of “Andy the cowboy” he turns out to be crazy, sullen and moody, but not crazy!

I found that the characters were fresh-they were funny but endearing, quirky but familiar and kept me interested. I also enjoyed that the scene (a ranch in British Columbia) was new and it is written so that I had a great visual of the setting even if I’ve not spent much time on a ranch myself!

There were a few things that irritated though- occasionally these Canadian cowboys came out with very English expressions. This seemed like something that could have been avoided? I also found some of the dialogue (especially between Kate and friend Gary) to be complicated and tough to read. So…I just began to happily skip these little parts and get back into the great light read!

I enjoyed this book with the unusual story line even though I did think it was a stretch in places. How the main character, Kate, could travel so far to help someone she only met online actually happens, but how she stays with being unwelcomed and wiggles her way into their lives felt outrageous to me at times. It never felt completely implausible though which is a credit to Lou Wakefield’s writing.

I had a difficult time with the slang in the dialogue meant to capture the ranching voice. I found it wasn’t consistent, only appearing sporadically and I could have done without it as I felt it made the daughter especially seem uneducated (and for some reason was mostly in her dialogue) which she wasn’t. It irritated me that it appeared randomly and would have like it to be used throughout the book or not at all.

I don’t have anything other than that to gripe about. It was an easy read, fast and kept me intrigued enough to find out who the mysterious person was at the other end of the computer. Not my favorite, but not terrible either.