Out of a Texas Night by Phyliss Miranda Release Date: May 29, 2018 Publisher: Lyrical Shine Book #3 in the Kasota Springs series Number of pages: 218 Kindle Edition Source: ARC from Net Galley Contemporary Romance/Western M/F Rating: PG-13 Read 5/24/18 to 5/27/18
I’m going to start off by saying I really liked the main hero of the story, Brody, a lot. I also liked the heroine, Dannie aka Avery, almost just as much. I think they had a wonderful connection and I loved that they just intrinsically trusted each other when they’re both of a background to distrust people. The way they meet and their first few interactions are sweet and fun. The main idea of this story is great and had the potential to turn this into a great romantic suspense novel.
I wanted to start off with those good, and even great, qualities this story has because I don’t want it to seem I’m beating up on this new-to-me author. For the rest of this review I’m going to do my best to explain my displeasure, so it doesn’t seem like I’m saying a bunch of negative things without reason.
There are things about this story that bothered me a lot that may not even phase another reader. We all have our own preferences, that’s why there are so many books in this world and that’s a good thing. One of those things was the details. There were far too many details that were in no way needed. I felt like I was reading a biography at some points. It got to be a bit much and often made the dialogue seem stilted, like the character speaking about themselves or an acquaintance was a casting director telling an actor their backstory for motivation. Again, this may not bother some readers. For me, it was distracting and seriously made me want to skip ahead each time it was happening.
Then there were other small things that seemed so odd and unrealistic that I couldn’t just brush them aside. Such as a woman police officer who has a lot of experience and is given a leadership role carrying her purse while investigating a case. What? At first I thought it would tie into the story somehow, or else why would the author keep bringing up her darn purse? But no, there’s not significance when it comes to the purse. Or the lipstick she puts on before going into an interrogation. I might not be from Texas or have a southern sensibility, but that just doesn’t seem like something a cop would do no matter where they’re from. They length of time Avery kept her full identity from Brody seemed silly and unnecessary. There came a point where it felt it was that way because the author was dead set on a big reveal instead of it actually driving the story.
I just realized that I could go step by step and voice all of the little things that annoyed me and took me out of the story here, but that’s just cruel. So instead I will reiterate that I enjoyed the characters and the underlying story. I think if Brody and Avery were as good at their jobs as the reader is supposed to believe they would have done things a bit differently and realized a lot of things much sooner. I had it figured out pretty quickly and they had all the same information I had so it wasn’t that hard. I had to do a lot of skimming because the story was far too wordy with inconsequential things. If this was a brand-new author and this was her first book I would say it’s a halfway decent debut. But this author has a few books under her belt, so I can’t give that praise. I only hope she continues to hone her craft because, regardless of how I’m coming across, I can definitely see where she has some potential.
2 stars
**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**
All In Good Time 