Committing to the Cowgirl (Colorado Cowgirls, # 1)
By: Jody Hedlund
Publication: July 1, 2023
230 pages
Genre: Adult, Historical Fiction,
Source: Personal Kindle Library (Thank you!!)
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Goodreads description--After years away, Astrid Nilsson has returned home to Colorado, hoping to become Fairplay’s second doctor . . . and to find healing for her reoccurring consumption. Spirited and independent, Astrid doesn’t want her illness to be a burden to those she loves, so she has resisted getting serious about any man.As the current doctor of Fairplay, Logan Steele is seeking to hire a male physician to take over his clinic after he goes back East. When Astrid, his childhood sweetheart, insists that she’s the one for the job, he offers her a bargain she can’t refuse: pretend to court him to appease his mother and he’ll give her the doctor position on a trial basis.
Astrid accepts the arrangement even though she’s reluctant to be in a sham relationship with a man who’d once broken her heart. She tries to keep herself from falling for Logan again but soon finds herself getting much more than she bargained for. With the clock ticking for both of them, can they commit to real love before it’s too late?
Jody Hedlund has become an auto-author for me. I can't quite say "auto-buy" because she releases books faster than I can keep up. But she is an author that I've come to learn I will probably enjoy anything she publishes. That being said, I always hoped Astrid would get her own book from the Colorado Cowboys series. So when I found out her story would be the start of a new series, I knew I would have to read it. And so I ended up buying this with a gift card I got for Christmas, and it was the perfect book to read when I read it because I needed to switch genres. I needed to read something fast that I would get hooked into quickly. And Committing to the Cowgirl did just that.
Astrid had consumption when she was little, and her sister moved her to Fairplay in an attempt to save her. Astrid has since grown up and moved away from Colorado, but her consumption is returning. Now that she has her medical license, she's hoping to return to Colorado and set up a private practice. The only trouble is that the practice is currently run by the one man who broke her heart many years ago. Logan Steele.
Logan was surprised to see Astrid show up for a job interview. He is all for women doctors, but he knows better than most how unaccepting others are of women. And he makes Astrid a deal to see how things go if she pretends to court him so that he can appease his dying mother who only wants to see her son happily settled. Unfortunately, the town is hit with an influenza outbreak. Astrid's consumption makes her case even more serious.
Personally, I felt like things wrapped up a little too quickly and smoothly. I suppose the plot didn't need to be drawn out. And I sure hate conflict for conflict's sake. It just felt a little jarring to me how quickly and smoothly everything turned around. I felt a little whiplash.
Favorite quotes:
-"I'll never, never consider you a burden. Do you understand? Never."
-Was it possible to twist a situation and see what one wanted rather than see the truth?
Of course, that's possible. And people do it all the time.
On the one hand, Committing to the Cowgirl was exactly what I needed at the time that I picked it up. I read it so fast. It was nice to have less than 300 pages when I've been reading 400+ page books lately. And I could easily get sucked in and root for these characters. It was also nice to have a break from language and spicy content. Jody Hedlund does a great job of building tension without having to be descriptive at all. And I'm glad to see that Astrid finally gets her happily ever after. Committing to the Cowgirl gets 4 Stars. Have you read Committing to the Cowgirl? What did you think? Let me know!
