Stephanie Plum with cowgirl boots, hot pink cowgirl boots. Tressa Jayne Turner is a cowgirl in Iowa, she's not a ranch hand but she's had a string of career disasters and is now working at a Wallmartish store as a clerk and a Dairy Queenish restaurant as an order taker, before she gets involved in a murder or three. If you like the Stephanie Plum series you'll enjoy the humor in this series and this first book also has a decent mystery. ( )

snarky, punfest, humor, amateur sleuth, women sleuths, murder

This book is just too much fun! Each character is quirky and well explored, the verbal and situational humor are hilarious, and the plot is well developed. The publisher's blurb is helpful, and no need for spoilers. No gratuitous erotica! Innuendos yes, but that's part of the fun! Well worth the price! ( )

This was a fun book but doesn't live up to it's marketing label. It was supposed to be a contemporary romance but honestly other than some love/hate name calling banter and a couple of smooches there wasn't much romance. It was more of a mystery but a weak one at that. I think the saving grace was that there were a few characters I loved. I loved the "hero's" grandpa who informed Tressa (aka Calamity Jayne) that he was the Green Hornet and she was his Kato and just needed to drive. This was before he pulled out a gun that would impress Dirty Harry for their protection which ended up stolen and used to murder a murderer.
I didn't like Bacus's way of wrapping up the mystery either. She builds up a somewhat suspenseful scene where the killer realizes Tressa is on to him/her and Bacus tries to continue the suspense by saying things like The Killer stared at Tressa. The Killer smiled a cold evil grin. So not identifying the killer during the big stand off for a a bit which I thought was a bit over kill and didn't make the mystery better. However, like I said there were some great (well, at least interesting) characters so I gave this book a 4 star rating and will read the next one. Oh and the blonde jokes peppered through the book were fun too. ( )

Calamity is an accident waiting to happen. You can identify with her insecurities that she tries to hide behind her ditzy blond/accident-prone facade. If you like zany but lovable characters and a mystery to solve you will enjoy this. ( )

A light romantic mystery for readers who think a new Stephanie Plum novel doesn't come out often enough. (It's a fairly good attempt but I hope Evanovic keeps writing.) The heroine is supposedly not as dumb as people think she is, but keeps blundering around in the midst of ongoing murders and doesn't really deserve to survive. Better written than many Smashwords self-published books but could have used an editor. Oh, yes, it was a free download, to encourage sales of the rest of the series. It was good enough that I read the whole thing, but I think I won't bother reading another. ( )