Oxana Lau: Chasing Chords

Oxana Lau takes readers on a sweet journey of following what you really want:

Dawn Taylor is struggling, she has inherited her parent's ranch after their sudden deaths, but with the ranch comes the responsibility, and debts associated with it. She is struggling to keep the ranch afloat with the only wat she knows how to make money and that is barrel racing. Nash Rhodes was on a downward spiral and one screw up too many has led him to no longer gracing stadiums but small bars around Canada. He needs to restore his image, and fast if he is to keep a promise to his bandmate Easton. Neither Dawn or Nash could have predicted that after their first meeting they had the means to help each other and maybe rediscover who they are.

This book was exactly what I needed at the time I read it. It is a super sweet small-town book with a side of spice. I loved that Dawn is a barrel racer who is just trying to raise as much money as she can for her ranch to stay afloat and that Nash is a famous but now cancelled Canadian country music star for some of his antic while drunk. Both are looking for something to help set their lives straight or on better paths and it was just a story I felt like I could get behind. This also has the tropes of small town and slow burn, plus some spicy time outside. The tension in this book is really well done and just when you think it is going to happen something seems to get in the way.

While I loved the concept of this book and both the characters I felt like their character development was lacking, as we knew very little of what occurred before. I just wanted more depth from each of their backstory, all they had given up to get to the point they are at now. I think for Nash maybe this could have been reflected in the song lyrics but we get very few of them in the book. I just wanted more the more i reflected on this book. This is probably because i enjoyed both characters and wanted to know them more, make them more real.

Dawn's character is all strength; all she is trying to do to keep the ranch and assisted living open against all odds in commendable. She puts others first all the time, even when all she wants to do is break down. I do question how she tries to raise money by continuing to barrel race as i cannot see that as profitable plus the cost from going to rodeo to rodeo but that is not my world. I also wish there was more shown of Ranch life and the assisted living life, I felt the side characters there were just glazed over at times and they would have been an asset to highlight for what Dawn is wanting to achieve.

I loved Nash the farther into the book that I got, especially when he gets to the ranch and starts interacting with the residents there. This is what I wanted more of in the book, more of him trying to find himself. 

On a completely different note, I hope that Lau has the next book feature Easton, as I feel like I want to know his story and more about him, and I hope he was not just a side character to be glazed over and left in this book.

This was a cute read, and I enjoyed it while I was reading it, I just wante4d more from that there was a  story and characters, as the ideas are there just not fully executed.

Enjoy!!

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