A Wedding at the Paragraph Ranch by Kay Ellington and Barbara Brannon - #review

Can she piece together a dream on a shoestring? As new owner of the falling-apart family homestead in West Texas, Dee Bennett is wrangling ways to earn a living, mend fences with farm and family, and manifest her dreams as a writer—all while nurturing the budding relationship with her beau, outdoorsy photographer Max Miller. But when a drop-dead-gorgeous, high-powered handler for a candidate in a key statewide election blows into Claxton, rivalries bigger than politics and football develop. With stakes running high on the campaign trail, as well as in publishing dreams and love lives, a Bennett family wedding must be attended to. And Dr. Dee, with the assistance of her motley writing-group protégés, must search her soul and fend off a host of challenges to live the life she just might learn to love.

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MY REVIEW

Oh yeah, I could definitely live at the Paragraph Ranch.  I can see myself struggling with Roy and Dale (Dee's gifted goats), chatting with friends in a writing club and paying someone else to fix up the yard.

Dee is one busy woman, and I admire her for it.  Not only has she taken over the family farm/ranch (so her mother could move closer to town), she negotiated a 33% raise for herself for a part-time political reporter job for the local paper, and took on an additional job at the town library.  Part of me wishes I still had that much energy; the other part wants to hand her a mint julep and tell her to 'set a spell'!

Any time you mix politics, small-town American secrets and nosy reporters inquisitive truth-seekers, somethings going to blow up.  The immovable object in this case is the secrets that most of the characters want to stay buried, and the irresistible force is Dee, who is going to find out the truth regardless the danger.  My money is on Dee

Dee has trouble not only in her professional life but her personal life as well.  The campaign manager for the TRC candidate is after her man, or at least it seems so.  I don't know about where y'all live, but in Texas, them's fightin' words!  No cat fights here, but I did find myself doing a mental fist-pump at the resolution to that issue.

Frankly, I applied to be on this tour because I LOVE this cover!  But now that I've read the book?  I have found a new set of small-town folks that I want to read more about.  This is the second book in the series, and hope that Dee keeps kickin' up dust in west Texas for many moons to come!

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MEET THE AUTHOR

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KAY ELLINGTON, a native West Texan, has worked in newspapers from New York to California to the Carolinas—and back again to Texas.

BARBARA BRANNON formerly led the Publishing Laboratory at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, but got to Texas as soon as she could.

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Click the logo to go to the tour page, where you will find more reviews and a LIVE INTERVIEW tomorrow (11/25)!  You an also find out how to become a viritual book tour host yourself!

(Disclosure:  I received a copy of this book from the author and publisher in exchange for my honest and unbiased review.)