A Lazy Reader's Review of "Done and Dusted" by Lyla Sage

Synopsis

    She's off-limits, but he's never been good at following the rules.

    For the first time in her life, Clementine "Emmy" Ryder has no idea what she's doing. She's accomplished everything on her to-do list. She left her small hometown of Meadowlark, Wyoming; went to college; and made a career for herself by doing her favorite things: riding horses. But after an accident makes it impossible for her to get back into the saddle, she has no choice but to return to the hometown she always wanted to escape.

    Luke Brooks is Meadowlark's most notorious bad boy, bar owner, and bachelor. He's also the unofficial fifth member of the Ryder family. As Emmy's older brother's best friend, Luke spent most of his childhood antagonizing her. It's been years since he's seen her, but when she walks into the bar and back into his life, he can't take his eyes off her. Despite his better judgement, he wants to do a whole lot more than just look at her.

    Emmy's got too much on her mind to think about romance. And Luke knows he should stay away from his best friend's younger sister. But what if Luke is just what Emmy needs to get her spark back? Or will they both go up in flames?

Review

    Okay, so I have quite a few thoughts regarding this book.

    To begin with, I recognize that I might be doing too much as this review goes on, but I honestly don't care.

    Anyway.

    I'll start with what I did like. The aesthetics were great. I had never read a cowboy romance book before and I think that this book was a good introduction into the sub-genre. It's cute and contained. I think that's probably the best way to describe this book: cute and contained. The dialogue, at times, was also pretty good and believable. I honestly have a really big problem when it comes to dialogue in romance novels as I tend to find them forced and cringy. I think that it's really just a me issue but, I digress.

    The romance. I really felt like the romance between Luke and Emmy was super insta-lovey. And I really don't like that trope in romance books. It just seems too unreasonable to me and it takes me out of the story entirely. I both of their POV chapters they make comments along the lines of "there's something different about her/him, I use to find them annoying but now their hot." Like I just don't get that. What is so different about them now that you didn't notice before. They just say that there is something different about the other person. Cheap, cheap, cheap way to make these two characters, who couldn't stand each other for most of their lives, fall in love.

    The plot. I initially thought the plot was super interesting when I first read the synopsis. A book where the two main love interests grow closer and start to develop feelings for each other whilst one party is trying to deal with their own mental and physical turmoil is right up my alley as I very much enjoyed Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez. But, that's not really what happened in this book. During a previous circuit, Emmy had suffered a severe injury after she was thrown off her horse and it's the reason why she left her life in Colorado and moved back home. This should have been the main focus of the novel, but was it? No. Of course not. This book was basically porn with very little, blink-and-you-miss-it plot. We should have had more scenes where Emmy really struggles with this mental block she's facing regarding barrel racing, which is her passion in life. I wanted to see her struggle more to even get on a horse, but when Luke begins to train her she gets on one with no issue at all. I would've even settled for a well-written scene where she has feelings of resentment toward her horse. But, no we need to make space for the smut scenes.

    The smut. Okay, I'm not gonna sit here and act like I'm above reading smut. I mean, come one, I didn't buy this book thinking I was only going to get scenes where they barely touched each other's hands. I knew there was going to be smut. But my god, the smut was just too much at times. And not in the way where the content itself was too much, it was just the length of it. I felt like some of these pages could've gone toward character development, which this book severely lacked in my opinion.

    The characters. There wasn't a lot of room for the reader to get to know and ultimately care about the characters in this book. We're given very basic aspects of each character's personality. Teddy is the care-free best friend, Gus is the brooding and responsible oldest sibling, Wes is a golden retriever personified, and Amos is your standard patriarch. These are archetypes, not actual characterization. We are also often told rather than shown things about these characters. I can't even begin to recall the amount of times a male character was referred to as "protective". Like, I get it. They are all macho cowboys who defend and protect their sister. Please, let's move on before I have a mental breakdown over it.

    I think the main issue this book suffers from is it's length. This book barely passes the 300-page mark and it's just really not enough room to work with considering everything the author put into this book. Emmy's riding issues, her ADHD, the family and friendship dynamics, the relationship between Luke and Emmy, Luke's familial issues. It's just too much content to put in 300-pages. I mean, you can do it. Sage obviously did but then you're left with a mediocre book.

    I really don't mean to sound like that much of a hater. I did ultimately have a good time reading this book, but I know it could have been a lot better if the author just added at least 100 more pages. I think it'll be a while before I decide to pick up the second book in this series, which I hope is a lot better than this one.

Nov. 24, 2024 – Nov. 28, 2024

★★☆☆☆

Favorite Quote: “Sugar, you deserve to go out on your own terms. Just because you got dusted doesn’t mean you’re done.” ~ pg. 268