Review: Tyler by C.H. Admirand

Tyler
~C.H. Admirand

Mass Market Paperback: 352 pages
Publisher: Sourcebooks Casablanca
Publish Date: March 1, 2011
ISBN-10: 1402243758
ISBN-13: 978-1402243752

From Goodreads:
Faced with a mountain of bills, rancher Tyler Garahan takes a night job with a lot of trepidation. But being a male performer at a strip club does come with at least one beautiful compensation-and feisty red-haired bookkeeper Emily Langley seems to understand Tyler even better than he understands himself...

Tyler is the first book in The Secret Life of Cowboys series. I've recently discovered cowboy romance and was looking forward to reading Tyler:

Tyler Garahan owns a ranch with his two brothers, Dylan and Jesse. Their mortgage is behind and they need to come up with money, quickly, or they'll lose the ranch. As the book opens, Tyler is answering a newspaper add for a hardworking man with a strong back. He thinks he's applying for a job stocking bar supplies, so he's surprised when the owner asks him to take off his shirt. Once he realizes he's applying to be a male stripper, he begins to back away...until they tell him how much money he'll be earning.

Emily Langley and her cousin, Jolene, run The Lucky Star ladies' club. These ladies are red-headed and tough (and we are constantly reminded of both these facts throughout the book). They are fighting to keep the club running - the local preservation society doesn't want a ladies' club, they want an old-time saloon.

It's instant attraction between Tyler and Emily, and when they get together the sexual sparks fly.

My thoughts: I had a difficult time getting into Tyler (<---that sounds dirtier than it is). The characters were so angry and snippy that it was hard for me to have any empathy for them, and I need that to enjoy a story. We really didn't get much background for either Tyler or Emily, and they jumped into the sexy stuff pretty quickly. Honestly, I skimmed a lot of the sexy bits - I would have preferred less sex and more character development. The plot complications of trust, Tyler's ex-girlfriend, and the Preservation Society made the story more interesting, but in the end couldn't hold my interest. Tyler was full of folksy cowboy phrases and sexy scenes between the hero/heroine, but in the end it wasn't enough to pull off the lackluster characters and slow story. My Rating:

This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.