DNF-ing This One: The Littlest Cowboy

The Littlest Cowboy

by Maggie Shayne
Book 1 of The Texas Brands

~ Goodreads ~

Rating:  No Rating
Progress:  7% into book

Baby on his Doorstep!  Sheriff Garrett Brand has raised his entire brood of siblings single-handedly, and he’s done his best to teach them some values, to mold them into honorable, responsible, and trustworthy human beings.  So when a baby lands on the doorstep of the Texas Brand, his first question is which younger brother is in for a butt-kicking?  But the little fellow isn't named after Ben, or Wes, or Adam, or Elliot.  The little feller is named after him – Garrett Ethan Brand–according to the note his mama left behind.

He’s still racking his brain to figure it all out, when a woman shows up at the ranch in the dead of night, spitting, fighting mad, and accusing Garrett of murdering her sister and stealing the baby!

Chelsea is confused, heartbroken, and too mad to think straight, and the same trouble that found her poor sister is right on her tail.  But of all the places she and the baby could've wound up, Garrett thinks this ranch is the best one.

Because this is one family that knows how to pull together and trouble doesn't stand a chance against The Brands of Texas.

I had a bad feeling about this book after reading the first chapter.  On a whim, I started skimming the rest of the book and found that I probably wouldn't like what came next.  From the short snippets I read here and there, we've got a bunch of cavemen-like alphas, and one irrational TSTL heroine.  There's also a lot of telling instead of showing.

There was one particular scene I decided to read, somewhere mid-book where we find out that there's a very dangerous man out there trying to find the heroine and her baby nephew.  A very dangerous man who might have killed her sister.  A very dangerous man who has resources and other dangerous men working for him.  So what does she do?  She decides that she's just going to go straight home where she lives, all by her lonesome, with a child in tow... where said very dangerous man already knows how to find her, and can just waltz up to her home and snatch the baby... maybe killing her while he's at it.

To be fair, to her, however, at some point in the book, the men all decide together that they need not tell the womenfolk just HOW dangerous this very dangerous man truly is.  They don't need to know.  No need to worry the fragile hearts of the little ladies, right?

......

There's entirely too much testosterone going on in this book for me.  Since when is NOT telling someone how much danger she (or even he) is in a good idea?  Ever?

I've read a lot of crap books lately.  I'm too tired to put up with another one.

I loved Maggie Shayne's Brown and de Luca series and have been hoping for another great from her.  But I suppose sometimes you just cut your losses where you can.  This is an earlier Maggie Shayne work, though, so maybe I should stick with her newer stuff.

I picked this book as one of my Reading Assignment Challenge books, and just as well, it was a Kindle freebie.  So I'm glad I got this book out of the way.

Moving on to something else now!