Bluegrass Undercover Review

Hey guys,

Happy review Monday…I know – three reviews in a row! I’ll hopefully mix it up soon but I’m enjoying doing my reviews at the moment.
Do you have a busy week ahead? I don’t have any plans really other than the upcoming weekend but my week looks pretty empty. Anywho…
As always this is a Spoiler Free review.
I was clearing out my kindle and I saw I had bought and downloaded this back in 2017 but never read it – and I thought it looked great so I decided to read it.
Let’s jump into the review.

Title: Bluegrass Undercover
Author: Kathleen Brooks
Genres: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary, Mystery
Publisher: Laurens Publishing
Publication Date: March 1st 2012
Pages: 242 pages
When I Read It: May 2nd 2021
Goodreads Rating: 4.24 Stars

Goodreads Description: ~
When danger and passions flare it’s best to find cover…
Cade Davies is a former Special Forces soldier who is now a high school teacher and football coach. And something is trying to kill his players. He’s been too busy trying to keep his players alive, while also avoiding the Davies Brothers marriage trap set by half the town, to pay attention and to the fiery redhead who has swept into his small town.
DEA Agent Annie Blake was undercover to bust a drug ring that preys on high school athletes in the adorable, small town of Keeneston. She had thought to keep her head down and listen to the local gossip to find the maker of this deadly drug. What Annie didn’t count on was becoming the local gossip. With marriage bets being placed and an entire town aiming to win the pot, Annie looks to Cade for help in bringing down the drug ring before another kid is killed. What she didn’t intend on was becoming the next target.

My Favourite Quote:

“Oh shut up or I’ll tell my sister you are thinking of giving her an iron for Christmas.” The remaining men in the room gasped and Cole went white. “That’s not funny. Get in the car, Davies.”

Review:

As a plot this had promise but it just missed the mark for me. There were a lot of time jumps that felt unnecessary, and they also meant massive chunks of their relationship were skipped out on. There was some extreme info-dumping and things that just felt shoved into the story for no reason. Example: Why was the whole thing with her Cousin there? It literally served no purpose and just felt tacked on last minute to give her some much needed character depth but somehow it managed to make it feel forced. You were given very little backstory on Cade and he was extremely one-dimensional. You got a little more background on Annie but even then it felt superfluous to the story rather than actually adding anything to her character.
Annie seemed so badass in the early chapters and as it went on that seemed to just leave her altogether, and by the end, it practically came across that she was incompetent at her job. It tried to fight the “I don’t need a man to save me” cliché but ended up falling right into it.
This being the apparent first in the series I presumed that it would read that way (character setup for further books, etc), but it seems that most of the characters in this have already had their own story and that the reader should already be familiar with people and the town. I found it so hard to keep track of all these people because it was treated like we were expected to know them all already.
The writing style also wasn’t great, there were some really cliched lines. This book also says that Glasgow is one of the most dangerous cities in the world!? I’d be hard-pressed to argue that the UK is on the list, let alone anywhere in Scotland. And why are so many bad guys Scottish? We’re nice here I swear!
Also, the whole Boss reveal was so meh. There was no reasoning behind anything, it felt just like it was for shock value rather than for actual plausibility.
So yeah, this was a big no for me. I loved the premise and just wished it was executed a little better.

Overall Score = 3/10
Star Rating: ⭐⭐

That’s all for today’s review folks. I hope you enjoyed this. I really wish I had enjoyed this more because after reading the Kings of Kearny recently I have been looking for a good mystery/romance/suspense kind of thing but sadly this didn’t hit the mark. Anyway, I will see you on Wednesday with my Word of the Week!