Review: The Gift

The Gift by Heather Slade
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Gift is my second Heather Slade read, and as with my first, I believe I would have enjoyed this more had I read the prior books in the series. The Gift is the fourth story in the Bulter Ranch series, a novella that follows on from the prior books. From what I can gather it relies heavily upon The Promise, The Truce, and The Secret.

I’ll be honest and say I went into this one feeling rather worried. I did not enjoy Kiss Me Cowboy anywhere near as much as I had hoped I would, meaning I was fearful my feelings towards The Gift would be much the same. In some ways my feelings were similar, but as a whole I enjoyed this one more than I enjoyed Kiss Me Cowboy.

As I’ve said, The Gift relies heavily upon the events of the three prior books. In fact, the majority of the events in this book relate back to what has happened in the prior books. I’m positive for fans of the series, this is a wonderful thing. I love it when authors provide short stories and novellas after the books have ended, providing you an insight into the what comes next, and such is what The Gift provides. Sadly, I felt rather lost reading the sections of the book dedicated to this element. I can appreciate what I was given, but I was not sucked in.

Fortunately, there was a story within this I could enjoy. It was linked in with all the other drama that has clearly occurred throughout the prior books, a story that links in with known characters and a history, but I found it was a nice element to this story that allowed me to enjoy it with only the glimmers of knowledge I had managed to grasp. There were also some other smaller elements interwoven, details that leave me believing there may be more stories to come in this series.

As a whole, I’m more interested in reading the Bulter Ranch series after reading The Gift than I was interested in reading the Cowboys of Crested Butte series after reading Kiss Me Cowboy. Unfortunately, I feel as though I did not enjoy this as much as I could have to due jumping into the novella without having read the prior books.

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