Blog Tour: The Wildest Ride

The Wildest Ride, Marcella Bell's latest romance novel, had a lot of potential. It's the first in a new cowboy/rodeo series - which sounded really interesting - and featured a kick ass heroine. Ultimately, this novel let me down. It was too long and too descriptive, and too many plot points didn't fit or didn't come together properly. I was really bummed.

Here's the book's description:

Rodeo meets reality-TV with this never-before-seen Closed Circuit competition, where an undefeated city-boy champion goes head to head with his world-class, kick-ass female rival. Romance ensues as they battle for the million-dollar prize.
At thirty-six, undefeated rodeo champion AJ Garza is supposed to be retiring, not chasing after an all new Closed Circuit rodeo tour with a million-dollar prize. But with the Houston rodeo program that saved him as a wayward teen on the brink of bankruptcy, he’ll enter. And he’ll win.
Enter, Lilian Sorrow Island. Raised by her grandparents on the family ranch in Muscogee, OK, Lil is more a cowboy than city-boy AJ will ever be. It shows. She’s not about to let him steal the prize that’ll save her ranch, even if he is breathtakingly magnificent, in pretty much every way going.
The world watches on as reality-TV meets rodeo in a competition like no other. In front of the cameras they’re each other’s biggest rivals. Off screen, it’s about to get a whole lot more complicated…

I think I'll start with how looong this novel was. Goodreads tells me it was 400 pages. And it felt it. No romance novel needs to be that long. And to make matters worse, so much of it was because of overly descriptive nonsense. I'm not going to quote any of it because I read an advanced copy and don't have a finished copy to compare it to but also because there were so many instances of just...way too much. And it was awfully repetitive. Lil's eyes were described way, way too often (so was her hair) and if I had to hear about the size discrepancy between the pair one more time (she's so tiny, how is she a cowgirl. He's so tall and broad and massive and swoony), I may have thrown my ereader out the window. 

And even with the incredible length of this book, so many things were left unfinished. There was no real drama in the reality show because they set up the top three who would battle until the end right off the top. And the third place cowboy was a total dick but it felt like there was supposed to be more to him but there wasn't. If he ends up being the hero in an upcoming novel, I would be so pissed. He faced no real consequences for his actions and there was a mention of potential sabotage that led nowhere. 

Lil is very cautious about who she dates because her mother was a "wild woman" who got pregnant by a cowboy on the rodeo circuit who rode out of town and she never told her family who Lil's father was. She died from an overdose and Lil's grandparents raised her themselves. I can understand being wary about relationships. But she throws all caution to the wind and makes out with AJ in the world's most unexpected first kiss and then they end up sleeping together but, surprise, she was a virgin and this was just not a discussion that was had. At all. Ever. AJ brings it up once he realizes what Lil meant with a throwaway comment (which I don't understand how he put two and two together, to be honest) but they never discuss it. Am I old fashioned in my old age of 34 and feel like perhaps that's a thing you should mention to your partner? Or does it even matter? Also, a condom is brought out the first time they almost sleep together and I am all for these scenes in romances because it's actually less sexy for the couple to fall into bed without having discussed birth control. But I didn't notice a mention of protection in the following sex scenes. Does this matter? No, not really. But my annoyed self clocked it and it did not help my feelings.

Speaking of Lil's unknown father...and maybe this is a spoiler but I'll still try to be vague...she does find out who he is near the end of the book. And it was so ridiculous I would have yelled at the book had I not wanted to disturb my household (the boyfriend was watching TV and the rabbit was lounging...it would have been rude to scream "COME ON" and toss my ereader across the room). 

So. Yeah. I was not a fan of The Wildest Ride. I think it comes down to the way Marcella Bell wrote her novel. I also think her editors let her down. This story had potential for so many reasons but I'm hard-pressed to find anything I really did like about the book and I know I won't pick up the next book in the series. I hate not liking a book but, as I always say, not every book is for every reader and I can tell from early reviews that others really enjoyed this one.

About the Author
Marcella Bell was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest. She is a registered yoga teacher, an avid reader, a honeybee enthusiast, and a lover of travel, corvids, and karaoke. A wife, mother, and child of a multicultural household, Marcella is especially interested in writing novels that reflect her family history, as well as the people and places she’s known throughout her life. 

Connect with the Author
Website * Facebook * Goodreads

Buy the Book
BookShop.org * Harlequin * Barnes & Noble
Amazon * Books-A-Million * Powell’s

*An egalley of this novel was provided by the publisher, Harlequin, in exchange for a review for the purpose of a blog tour. All opinions are honest and my own.*