Wednesday, March 6, 2019

No Cowboys No Angels by Petie McCarty (Spotlight, excerpt, review, and GIVEAWAY) GFT






by 
Petie McCarty

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GENRE: Contemporary Romance

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BLURB:

A cozy romantic mystery with suspense, Book 1 from The Mystery Angel Romances series. An angel hidden in every book . . . it's up to the reader to figure out who.

In No Cowboys No Angels, Kellen Brand's inheritance turns out to be a whopper—one dilapidated farm in West Virginia and one guardian angel!

Since Kellen is convinced no sane woman would choose to live in Riverside, she vows to sell her farm and quick. Her handsome neighbor Luke Kenyon must block the farm sale or risk exposure of his family's secrets. While Kellen has located one potential buyer, she faces a town full of objectors. Someone is trying to frighten her off, and Luke is forced to step in and rescue her more than once.

Unfortunately, Kellen can't seem to stay out of trouble. She stumbles onto a clandestine hazardous-waste-dumping operation next to her farm, and she prays Luke has one more rescue up his sleeve. It's her only hope of staying alive.

Unless her mother really did leave her a guardian angel . . .

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EXCERPT


Slowing near the tree line to get her bearings, Kellen pulled over at a spot where the bank jutted out over the water. She climbed out of the car and scanned the shoreline. To her right, the slope flattened out and provided easy access to the water. The Tanawoc River maintained a good current, sending soggy leaves and debris speeding past in its flow. Grassy hills rolled back from the opposite riverbank, and she wondered if the Clandestine Mining Company still owned all that property.

A familiar aroma wafted up from the river, a combination of humus, plant material, microscopic plankton, and a touch of fish. Unable to stop the smile slowly stretching across her face, she untied her sneakers, rolled up her jeans, and slipped into the icy water. She immediately gasped and felt her smile deepen to a grin. She remained in the soothing current for a long time, taking in her surroundings as she watched trout dart in and around the submerged rocks to grab their plankton lunch.

A horse whickered behind her, then came the telltale creak of a saddle. Too close for comfort. The back of her neck prickled. Ankle deep in the water, she couldn’t make a decent sprint for the car, and Kellen regretted her impulse to visit this deserted stretch of riverbank.

Easing around, she spied the towering silhouette of a powerfully built man astride a huge black stallion no more than ten yards away. The rider’s face lay shadowed beneath a wide-brimmed Stetson. The cowboy made an impressive and, at this moment, intimidating sight—a throwback from the frontier days of the Wild West.

The horse whickered again and sidestepped away from the edge of the embankment, forcing the cowboy to twist around to keep her in sight. She could feel his dark eyes scanning every inch of her. The intensity in his gaze raised goosebumps on her arms, and a tiny shiver vibrated up her spine. Trapped here along the edge of the river, she felt vulnerable yet strangely unafraid. Would he come any closer?

A horn blared up on the highway, and she jumped with a yelp. The big horse reared at the sound of her cry, and Kellen caught a brief glimpse of the cowboy’s dark eyes, eyes that could stare right through to a girl’s soul. She scrunched her own eyes shut and forced herself to breathe. When she opened them, the rider was gone. Had she imagined him? Another mild shiver rifled up her spine. No, the fearsome rider was definitely real.

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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Petie spent a large part of her career working at Walt Disney World—"The  Most Magical Place on Earth"—where she enjoyed working in the land of fairy tales by day and creating her own romantic fairy tales by night, including her new series, The Cinderella Romances. She eventually said good-bye to her "day" job to write her stories full-time. These days Petie spends her time writing sequels to her regency time-travel series, Lords in Time, and her cozy-mystery-with-romantic-suspense series, the Mystery Angel Romances.

Petie shares her home on the Cumberland Plateau in Tennessee with her horticulturist husband and a noisy Nanday conure named Sassy who made a cameo appearance in No Angels at Christmas coming April 2019. 


Visit Petie's website or her Facebook page.


BIO Social Media:









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GIVEAWAY





a Rafflecopter giveaway


 
The tour dates can be found here



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My review:


 
3.75 out of 5 stars





No Cowboys No Angels by Petie McCarty is a mystery with romantic, paranormal, and western elements. The challenges that Kellen Brand faces when she returns to the town where she experienced such privation as a child are not just the difficulty of facing her bad memories and selling the family homestead, but her attraction to her sexy neighbor, Luke, and the ties and relationships that seem to pick up right where they left off twenty years ago. When danger escalates, Kellen can only hope that the guardian angel her mother bequeathed her is still on the job.



This story is the first book in the ‘Mystery Angel Romances’ series and has quite a combination of elements. Of course I loved the sexy cowboy hero who has a little trouble smoothing over his abrupt mannerisms when dealing with the woman he sees as a big-city snob. Kellen was a little frustrating with her hot and cold mannerisms toward the town, her former classmates, and her exasperating neighbor—not to mention her incurable nosiness and propensity for jumping to conclusions—but she does have redeeming qualities.



There are several very dramatic scenes that keep the tension escalating and poignant issues that both main characters are dealing with that give the story depth and emotion. Certain details are inconsistent to me, such as whether a cabin has an attic, whether a benefactor would donate expensive equipment but be obtuse to the lack of lunches for the kids, or even how a certain bad guy ended up in the right place at the right time, but that didn’t ruin my enjoyment of the tale. Overall, this is a fun and romantic story that leaves one with a warm fuzzy feeling and reminds us of how important faith can be.  



A copy of this title was provided to me for review
















 





7 comments:

  1. She sounds like she stumbles onto a lot of trouble and a maybe guardian angel? That sounds pretty good.

    ReplyDelete
  2. What book or novel had the biggest impact on you? Bernie Wallace BWallace1980(at)hotmail(d0t)com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. On Writing by Stephen King. Read it three different times. Part autobiography and part writing help. Thanks for asking, Joseph!
      Have a magical week!
      Petie

      Delete
  3. Thank you for taking valuable time to read and review my story!
    Have a magical Spring!
    Petie

    ReplyDelete