" Be warned the blurb for Strawberry Hill is not the book you’re going to read or in this case, listen to, especially if you’re looking for a lightweight, feel-good romance between a deaf ranch foreman and a new-to-wilderness deputy that the blurb promotes. Instead, based on opening and closing scenes, and the overall volume, the book belongs to Wyatt’s boss, 60-year-old, Slade, and his high school love, Vickie, who bore him a son 42 years earlier that he didn’t know about.
The deaf foreman and deputy do exist in the book, and there are even some intriguing, well done scenes between them, including one of Wyatt calming a scared horse that reminded me of John H in Malcolm Brooks’ Painted Horses. Anderson goes into great detail describing Callie’s frantic attempts to look good for Wyatt when he invites her to a dinner on short notice, but then, nothing. That’s it. It’s as though she’s done with their story. Instead of telling us what happens at dinner, she jumps back to Slade and Vickie’s story and does not return to the scene in any significant way. It was so jarring that I backed up the audio book to listen to the track again, thinking I’d somehow missed something, and given how long the tracks are (30+ minutes), I was annoyed when I got to the end because, nope, nothing. Unless the company that made the audio book messed up, Anderson just drops Wyatt and Callie. When you get the happy ever after—spoiler alert here—Wyatt and the good deputy sheriff barely get a mention.
So, what about Slade and Vickie? After all, I’m not opposed to reading/listening to a love story between sixty-somethings. Unfortunately, I don’t think Anderson’s attempts to show personal growth and thereby make Vickie deserving of our sympathy and her HEA worked because the character is a little too “long in the tooth” to be behaving the way Anderson depicts her. Between the less than harmless vindictive pranks Vickie pulls in camp to “get even” with Slade, and a bar fight she has with another 60+ woman, both of whom should know better, which Anderson spends way too time describing in way too much detail as though this is something I want to listen to (I did not) or, is a pivotal scene (it was not), and it certainly didn’t earn my sympathies. Instead, the Vickie character becomes a trite caricature lacking any emotional intelligence. Sans the bar, grade school anyone?
Usually, Catherine Anderson can tell a good beach-blanket story. Just not this time. The book does have story threads potentially worth pulling, but the execution just isn’t there. The book is all over the place with no commonality. I came away wondering if Anderson’s contract demanded she produce a 485-page/13-hour audio book and she got into a time crunch and threw these two stories together just to satisfy the contract with little thought to making them work. That is a shame because she has the skills to produce books with blended storylines worth listening to or reading. Is this one worth our time to read or listen to? No.
If you haven’t already done so, I recommend spending your money and time on Malcolm Brooks’ Painted Horses, which audiobookstore® also sells. It’s not lightweight, but so much more deserving of our time and money than Strawberry Hills. "
— C-Lou, 1/31/2021