Debra Clopton

Lacy Brown and her friend Sheri move from Dallas to Mule Hollow, Texas, to open a beauty salon. This little town isn't a random choice. The older ladies of Mule Hollow placed advertisements looking for women to move there and help revive their dying town by becoming potential brides for the men. The town is sadly reduced after the collapse of the oil industry locally cost them a large part of their former population, and nearly all the young families and unattached young women.

Lacy doesn't show more plan to be one of the brides. She's on a mission--a mission from God--to help the women who will come to find the right matches among the cowboys who currently have no one to marry.

This is a Christian romance. That can mean a lot of things. In this case, Lacy is, on the one hand, the kind of southern, Evangelist, talking openly about it, Christian that is very distant from my own New England, Catholic and Episcopalian, reserved sort of Christian. In my culture, you don't talk that openly about sincere religious belief, not because it's not important, but precisely because it is. It's for guiding your moral choices and judgments, and your relationship with God is a private matter, not for putting in the shop window, on public display. Lacy Brown is from a really different culture, where people who don't talk often and enthusiastically about their faith--about something that in my culture is deeply private--you are presumed not to have it.

With all that said, Clopton convincingly portrays Lacy as a woman whose faith differs from mine mainly in these cultural aspects, not in its essential substance or sincerity. And that's even as a good bit of her outward behavior is, in my culture, a marker of shallow and insincere claims of faith. I feel a connection to Lacy in the matter where her outward behavior is most alien to me.

That's good writing.

Lacy is smart, capable, tough. She genuinely likes other people, and is not judgmental about people whose view of life is different from her own. She's clear-headed about knowing what values she does need a potential spouse to share with her. She has an enthusiasm for life that's captivating, and a commitment to keep trying to be a better person, and a natural and genuine impulse to help others in ways that will really make them better off.

Her plan to help Mule Hollow seems outwardly a bit nutty and impulsive, and she in fact goes about it in a thoughtful and intelligent way.

And of course, she's barely reached the town when she meets Clint Matlock, and clashes spectacularly with him on the main street in town, in front of everyone.

They're in some ways very different people, and in other ways have important things in common. They're both a bit damaged by abandonment by a parent--Clint by his mother, Lacy by her father. Each has something to learn from the other.

I really like both of them, and it's fun seeing their relationship develop. Overall, this book is a lot of fun, and satisfying.

Recommended.

I bought this audiobook. show less

I loved the ending message of this story! It is a story that shows that it is possible after having truly loved someone once, to fall in love again, and to still pay tribute to how one's first love will never be forgotten.

Pollyanna McDonald and her 8 year old son move to Mule Hollow to start over after having lost her husband through a car accident. She finds herself neighbors to Nate Talbert, a reclusive cowboy who has lost his wife. They both have loved and lost someone very special, show more someone they cannot forget. But this story so beautifully shows a friendship, based on a mutual understanding of each other, and how that grows into a love for each other, without ever taking away from the love they have lost. This was very well done by this author and moved me to tears near the end. It is one of my favorites of this Mule Hollow series.

I also appreciated the author's letter to the reader at the end of the book (something you should always take the time to read). She states, "I pray each of you knows how wonderful and gracious God is. His love is everlasting. He is with us in the best of times, but more importantly, He is with us in the worst of times. When we are weak, He is strong." This is the kind and tenderhearted way that this author writes and I appreciate the way she handled this story. It had a fun and enjoyable feel to it, with a very good love story that will stick with me long after having read it. show less

Let me save you the trouble of reading this book--it's a tired plot that's not reworked in an interesting fashion and apparently "The Trouble With Lacy Brown" is that her last name is not Matlock--as in Clint Matlock's wife. In between their meeting and their getting together you're subject to 250 some pages of "I don't trust women because they tend to run off when the going gets tough" and "I want to run a business, I'm not in the market for a husband."

The third in an inspirational romance series, this cowboy love story leaves little to the imagination. Cassidy Starr escapes her loveless marriage and retreats to her aunt's house where she spent many a summer growing up. With her aunt dead six years, Cassidy hopes to turn the farmhouse into a bed and breakfast and organic strawberry farm. She happens to forget that the boy who broke her heart as a teenager lives right next door, and of course he's a gorgeous cowboy. Jarrod Monahan's biggest show more mistake was fleeing Cassidy's love. They shared a beautiful kiss and then he fled; her heart broken she threw herself onto the first man she saw, her awful ex-husband. Now he is determined to right his wrongs and win her back but she's having none of it, he already had his chance and Cassidy wants to be an independent women. It's the usual romance story and the reader knows how it will end after the first chapter. It's not too "Christian," so some reader's won't be scared away by excessive preachiness. The book justifies divorce, helps out unwed teen mothers, and the characters attend a "cowboy church." It's a light fluffy read with a little God, an eccentric town (my favorite part), and a happy ending.

I received this book for free from Litfuse publicity in return for my honest, unbiased review. show less