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Gold Rush Ranch #1

Storytel Audiobook

Author: Elsie Silver

Narrators: C. J. Bloom and Tim Paige

In Elsie’s debut novel. she takes us to Gold Rush Ranch, where Vaughn Harding is having a hard time reconciling with not only the death of the beloved grandfather who raised him, but also with the fact that the old man was involved in fixing horse races. On top of that, he has to hire a new trainer and hope they can train the devil horse everyone is afraid to get even close to. 

Enter Billie Black… and she enters with a bang, with a first meeting that is the utmost opposite of a “meet cute”. She’s feisty, young and hungry to succeed in “the sport of Kings”. He gives her a “trial period”, but what she wasn’t expecting was that she’d win the horse’s heart and also steal his. 

I am always afraid to go to favorite authors’ backlists because we all know people grow and develop their skills and they hardly ever were as good as they are now in the beginning. This book, though not perfect, has all the marking of the Elsie Silver we’ve come to love. The heroine is fun and relatable (I would say Billy was Willa’s “prototype”so to speak) and her hero is swoony. I love a small town romance and cowboys are fun, but this is high level horse racing here. ( I must confess that there was way too much horse talk for this city girl here….)

Narration: The audiobook is narrated by C.J Bloom, who can do feisty, spunky heroines like no other and her partner is Tim Paige who does not disappoint as an Elsie hero. 
All in all, a great experience as Elsie always delivers.

Content notes: death of a loved one (historical), grief, estrangement from family, animal in distress