Can't Hurry Love by Molly O'Keefe

Can't Hurry Love by Molly O'Keefe was the first book I've read by this author and it wasn't your traditional contemporary western romance. Yes, there was the rough and tumbled cowboy, but the female lead was just as flawed as her male counter part, but the issues that they were fighting through were very much real and unlike any other romance novel I have read before.

Victoria Baker may have come to Crooked Creek Ranch as a child in the summers but she never fit in there or with her family until she came back to the Texas ranch a penniless disgraced wife of a New York Financier, who had stolen people's money in a ponzie scheme. Determined to take her life back into control Baker is determined to run the family ranch with the help of the forman, Eli. Only things aren't as easy, or hard, as Victoria had expected. Eli is determined to get the ranch back from the Bakers that his great great grandfather had lost to the them before he was even born. Both driven to prove themselves to there families, they end up in a twist of fate falling for each other no matter how hard they fight it while finding themselves in a new business venture that neither of them quite knew would be their salvation.

Eli and Victoria's relationship is purely driven on passion until they realize that they really care more for the other than they had originally thought they had. O'keefe's sex scenes are just as rough and tumble as any other relationship that is based purely on lust and sex. Victoria is finally able to explore her sexuality in a way that she had never been able to before and Eli is more than happy to oblige her in what she considers a dirty little secrete. And it is refreshing to have a sex scene in a romance that doesn't start or end in missionary position.

Both of Eli and Victoria's personal issues are driven bone deep with them that it takes a lot for them to work through. It's refreshing to know that while they both work through their own things they are really in the end helping the other. Even if at first they don't think that is what is happening. Being able to read about two people who in the hardest part of their lives they end up showing who they really are to the other, when no one else gets to see them. Like in the real world it's rare to let people see the real you and when you finally do, it's easy to slide back into old ways of being the 'safe person' that others have known for so long.

One of the great things that I liked about this book is that the book isn't about the two main characters just working through there own issues and falling in love. It's also about them mending relationships within their own family. In a way they are finding out more about themselves and letting themselves for the first time in their adult lives see the people who are in their lives for what and who they really are. And in the end it surprises them in more than one way. A father figure, a long lost mother and a step mother who is trying to make amends. It's a real life family who has more issues that need to be dealt with, but are working their way through it all to become closer than they ever thought was imaginable.

Molly O'keefe's Can't Hurry Love was refreshing to read as it doesn't follow the traditional cowboy romance formula that I've found many do follow. The cowboy doesn't rescue the girl from a life threatening event, nor does the girl domesticate the rouge of a man. In the end they both fight each other tooth and nail the whole way and end up saving each other from being the people they thought that they would end up turning into. Turning in to the people they never believed that they could actually become from all of the struggles. They hated to love the other and in the end that was exactly what they needed.

You can find out more about Molly O'keefe and her other books at her website www.molly-okeefe.com.