Close Enough to Touch by Victoria Dahl
August 28, 2012
Contemporary Romance
Harlequin
Reviewed by Mandi
I read this book and then let it sit for a few days before I wrote the review because I just couldn’t figure out my feelings for this one. Victoria Dahl gives us a very prickly heroine. Grace is a make-up artist from Hollywood. After getting fired while on set of a movie, and then having a very bad break up with a boyfriend that literally leaves her penniless, she gets in the car and starts driving. She has a great aunt that lives in Jackson Hole, Wyoming who has an apartment that she is willing to let Grace stay in until she can figure out her life. Her goal is to work for a few weeks in Jackson Hole to get some money, and then continue on to Vancouver where she is hoping to find more markup artist work in the movie business. Having purple hair, she is not one to blend into the quaint, popular tourist town. Grace had a very bad childhood and for that reason has some major trust issues. She has a huge chip on her shoulder and pretty much feels everyone is out to get her.
After she moves in she meets her next door neighbor Cole Rawlins. Cole is a cowboy. He works on a ranch and one day hopes to buy the ranch himself, which has been his life long dream. He was injured a while ago, resulting in a very bad fracture of his leg and pelvis. He has been to extensive physical therapy. This frustrates him to no end, as all he wants to do is jump on a horse and resume his ranch duties. But he is not physically fit yet.
When Cole was younger, he met a famous actress and moved to California to be with her. This relationship ended badly, and Cole has a very bad memories of anything to do with Hollywood. I’ll stop the summary here because I feel like this is one of the weakest parts of the book. It felt forced that Cole was in love with some gorgeous movie star. His personality just didn’t feel like this would ever happen. Or maybe it just wasn’t fleshed out well enough in the book. It felt more like he had this relationship, to cause conflict with Grace who happens to be in the movie industry. Cole is a charmer, and has that sexy cowboy drawl he uses to woo the ladies. I liked that about him. I liked hearing about his work on the ranch. He is intense and as usual, the author makes his sex scenes dirty. I actually liked Grace individually too. Yes, she is hard to like at first, but I think the author gives her a dark enough history that you can understand why she acts like that.
Unfortunately, the two of them together just didn’t make sense to me. Just like I never felt like Cole would have been with the actress years ago (who we end up meeting in the book). I feel like him and Grace lacked chemistry. I guess it comes down to the fact that I liked the characters by themselves, I just didn’t like them together.
I enjoy Victoria Dahl’s work and she is a definite auto buy, but this one is probably my least favorite of hers.
Rating: C
Recent Reviews:
Under the Covers – 5/5
Throuthehaze – 1.5/5
Happily Ever After – 2.5/5
Ed and Em’s Reviews – 4.5/5
Goodreads
Completely agree that this was my least favorite Dahl. And I read it while I was in Jackson Hole, so you would think maybe that would help? Not at all. Zero chemistry, dull plot, weird pace…I’ll still read Dahl even if she just copied out the phone book, but I was really disappointed in this one.
Oh wow..u read it while in Jackson Hole :) It was missing something…chemistry? Humor? I don’t know. Hope the next one is better!
Oh that’s too bad! I’m new to Dahl-loved her brewery trilogy, but I think I might skip this one.
Her other stuff is pretty good…I always tell people to start with her first trilogy (the one with Lean Me On). Brewery trilogy is pretty good too.