Title: Wild Ride at the Dude Ranch
Author: Sherry Walraven
Publisher: Outskirts Press
ISBN: 978-1977228024
Pages: 184
Genre: Fiction / Mystery / Adventure
Reviewed by: Jake Bishop
Hollywood Book Reviews
A gaggle of female cousins ,who frequently vacation together, decide that a dude ranch would be just what the doctor ordered. For some bizarre reason, they decide that it would be fun to change their names and make up alternate lives, so they start calling each other by their new handles as they begin their frontier adventure. Before they’ve been on the ranch very long, they hear stories of how someone went missing there before and their excursion for fun takes on a mysterious tone as well. The mystery is only heightened when they find an old cabin that is said to house ghosts. Needless to say, they can’t keep themselves from checking into it, and the scream they hear, but can’t make out, is the remnant of a sordid tale of torture and murder.
When the cousins meet one woman who is basically running away from an abusive husband, and then another woman is actually killed at the dude ranch, the suspense quotient ramps up exponentially. As do the players in this modern horse opera. Readers are introduced to a number of people including a serial killer who was horribly abused by his parents as a child. Plus, a strange, tall woman who takes it upon herself to be the sprightly cousins protector. Just when you think things couldn’t get more complicated, the action switches to the male cousins who were coming to the dude ranch to meet their female counterparts. On their way, they’re hijacked at gun point and forced to join a group of cattle rustlers with mayhem on their mind.
The parallel plots with multiple tributaries twist and turn their way from one surprise to another until they eventually merge. Multiple horrendous situations are eventually resolved and all loose ends get tied, wrongs get righted, and the women experience a thoroughly grand adventure.
Author Walraven has a vivid imagination that plunges into storytelling with more energy than discipline. While she catapults from one dire situation to the next, her mixed tenses tangle alarmingly. Still, she’s able to conjure images that find resonance in varying degrees of everything from brutality, to sympathy, to high drama and low comedy. Her depiction of camaraderie between the cousins is both heartfelt and credible. The supporting players who fill out her tome are both engaging and memorable, and the dialogue she supplies them with feels appropriate. She’s also able to tell her story of dastardly deeds being perpetrated on others without the need for profanity or vulgarity. A welcome style in this day and age. Walraven also leaves readers with the impression that this won’t be the last adventure of the comical cousins who went for a particularly Wild Ride at the Dude Ranch.