Beth's Reviews > Dreaming of Her Cowboy's Kiss

Race was a famous surgeon. He lost his wife and family to his career. Somehow, he and his wife got a second chance when he felt called by God to ministry.
Ethan was the terror of the town, a runaway from a horrible home situation, and Race took him under his wing, giving him a place to stay and guidance and eventually, Ethan gave his life to the Lord.
While Ethan was living with Race and Penny, they adopted a large family. The kids' parent had been killed by a drunk driver. Ruby, the eldest at 17, had gathered her siblings together and insisted they stay together. They had been separated, and one of the younger ones had been traumatized badly, none had had good esperiences. Ruby had been determined since her parents were alive and homeschooling them that she wanted to be a doctor, but after her parents died of their injuries, she derermined to be a trauma surgeon. It was a long haul with long hours and hard studying. Every so often she would call home, seeking encouragement from Race, and without saying anything, Ethan would go to wherever she was, feed her, make her sleep, do her laundry, clean her place, whatever she needed to give her the strength to go on. Ethan had fallen for her the day she'd come to the house with her siblings, admiring the strength of character that she exhibited in keeping her family together.
We actually meet Ruby in her wedding gown, reflecting on the man she is marrying - more as a business agreement since there is no love there. He is from a family of famous surgeons from LA, and being his wife will open up opportunities for her, and she has significant student debt. She thinks friendship and mutual respect are enough...until she goes to get the flower petals for the wedding and finds him just having finished humping the florist's assistant, who isn't old enough to be a girlfriend. She wonders how many other times this has happened. She expected fidelity but it's apparent she's not going to get it.
Ethan has come to the wedding. He didn't want to leave his ranch to see the woman he loves marry someone else but goes at his foster father's request. He has parked his motorcycle in back. He goes down to get his father's sermon notes, and sees Ruby running down towards him. He intercepts her to find out what's wrong and then, with her consent, takes her to his place. She has no clothes, no money, no cell phone, all of those were either in the room at church where she got into her wedding gown or in her fiance's car. Her mother retrieves them for her and takes them to her.
She finds herself relieved, except that her job with the team of surgeons is no longer hers, and there is an underlying hint that this family might blacklist her. We never find out if they do, however, because the focus shifts. It turns out Ethan has an informal camp where he takes in 10 boys from poor families and bad homes and teaches them how to do things around the ranch. They came for 4 weeks, going home on weekends, and the last week they have a Christmas in July type of celebration. Ruby think girls should be included and takes on 5 young girls. She finds ways to impart medical knowledge, and shows them how to use the web to find out things they don't know.
Meanwhile, Ruby has figired out she does return Ethan's love, but she isn't sure about giving up her surgical career to live on a ranch, and knows Ethan would be a fish out of water in an urban setting where he doesn't have the care of the land, of living things, of growing things.
Race talks to him about what he himself was like as a surgeon, and how he messed up his marriage to Penny, and how God drew them back together when he got over his selfishness. Penny talks to Ruby about faith and love.
Also in the picture is Natalie, who left her alcoholic, abusive husband and rents a small ramshackle cabin from a differenr landowner - who sells his farm, leaving her and her 5 kids in limbo about their cabin. She always helps with the camp, with cooking breakfast and other meals as needed - sometimes Ethan takes them into the woods and shows them how to make their own food from what he brings, so lunch and sometimes supper are taken care of, and Penny also helps.
One of the things the boys do with Ethan is to clean up after the loggers, cutting up wood they leave behind. But because of an emergency, the man who os supposed to pay him for giving them permission to log on his land hadn't paid him, though he does towards the end of the book.
This is a clean, Christian romance story, and has a good storyline and good characters, but the book IMO ends abruptly, with too many questions unanswered, including what happens with the main characters, what happens to Natalie and her 5 kids, plus anything about Ruby's siblings except that, to varying degrees, that they were traumatized by their separation. At the end the author mentions her next book is about Natalie, so there's a chance to find out what happens to her, but if her story frustratingly ends like this one, we won't find out very much about her, and we'll be left hanging again.
This seems to be a trend in Christian romances. The last several books I have read have done the same thing. If they believe this will increase the likelihood of more sales of sequels in a series, for me, it makes me want to avoid anything they write. It's lazy IMO. Get some characters to become, maybe, a couple, and cut off the story, and advertise your next book at the end. The books I've accidentally gotten written with sex scenes in them that I have to page through are often more complete than these, although this trend is spreading even to those to some extent. And most writers of Amish romances are very complete, and faith is a huge part of their framework.
Finish the story or don't write it at all.