Customer Reviews

The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels--A Love Story

5 star:		(135)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(12)
1 star:		(27)

 

 

I read this story when she posted it on her website and enjoyed it the first time. I was terribly disappointed to find this book was the exact same story word for work. A final chapter was added, but again if you follow the Pioneer Woman blog, there isn't anything you haven't read before.

If you read Ree's blog you've probably read much of this in serial form, in which the recycled, repetitive nature of the writing didn't grate so badly. In book form though it is just so much of the same old, same old, over and over and over and over again.. Ladd's butt is cute, we made out, we cooked, we made out.. on and on and on ad nauseam. I think that covers it.

The new section on the first year of marriage is written in a totally different style, almost as if another person wrote it, or it was dashed out in an hour or two. Sparse details, with no depth to the new part of the story, unlike the first part that goes into minute details of the most mundane things this glosses over what could have been interesting if some effort was made.

Save your money, go to the blog and read what already exists. You won't miss a thing.

I love PW and follow her blog daily. I was so excited to get this book and read it since I had read the story on her site about how she and her husband met and fell in love. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed in this book. Only the last 85 pages is new material. The majority of the material can be read for free online. Also, the story up through the wedding is very detailed and flows beautifully. The story that takes place after the wedding doesn't have a lot of detail and doesn't really flow that well, but what can be expected when you are using 85 pages to cover a year when you have previously used 230 pages to describe the first year? The price is very high, even at the sale price, for the amount of new material. I suggest checking this book out from your library rather than purchasing it, or just reading the blog for free.

I read Drummond's blog, but the story of her meeting and marrying Marlboro Man doesn't translate well into a book. I found the book shallow, repetitive, and incredibly expensive (Kindle) for what I got. This book is a waste of money except for those who enjoy reading dribble.

What pains me most about this book is how cliched and redundant it is. Ree has a fun blog with lots of content, but this "book" is already serialized on her site for free, albeit with a few new (rushed, badly edited) chapters at the end to justify the hardcover book price.

Why are so many bloggers such bad book writers?

I'm not one of those people who thinks the sun shines out of Ree Drummond's behind. I know that "The Pioneer Woman" is a persona she has created for the internet, that she is hardly "keepin' it real" as she wants her readers to believe, and that she is running her site for the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of dollars that it makes her every year. And that's fine. If I could slap a few pictures and recipes on the internet every day and get paid thousands of dollars to do it, I would too. She's living the American dream, and there's no judgement here for that.

That being said, I still like the blog. I like the PW persona. And like many others, I was fascinated by the love story she told online about her and Marlboro Man's romance (although I've often wondered what, exactly, their relationship is built on besides smoldering looks and red meat). It's like "Twilight": You know the relationship is fluff built on a foundation of lust, but it's still a fun read. However, my biggest problem with this book is the way it was marketed. For months, Ree drummed up publicity about this memoir, promising us tons of new content and saying that if we've read the blog posts about their courtship, we would love the book with all of its additions and details. Where are these "additions"? Where is this "new content"? Ree conned her readers into paying $26 for something they had already read for free on her site. The only "new" material in this book were the final few chapters about her pregnancy and postpartum depression, and even parts of that were shared on the blog before. Had I known that this was just a marketing scheme to make more money off of material she had already been paid for, I would have never bought this book.

Like many have said, most of the book is available free on her blog, I first read it on her blog and I laughed and I cried reading it. I was so excited to read more! Being a newlywed myself I was excited to see how Ree handled the wedding the first year of marriage. I was super disappointed, it seemed disjointed, hokey, like she was trying too hard.

I'll continue to read her blog and I love her cookbook, but will be skeptical of any new novels.

If you are looking for a book to read with a litte substance and depth pass this one by. Quickly! I had to read this book for my book club and I cringed cover to cover. It was 200 banal pages about falling in love with a cowboy ( Marlboro man, Really) and delaying career plans (forever).

There were no "ah hah" moments about life. No learning about history. No real learning about anything. Books can be light and still leave you with something you didn't have before. The only thing this book left me was about $14 dollar poorer.

Ok, I have a thing for cowboys, in fact, my husband of 35 years wears a Stetson, and even if we don't run cattle, we occasionally have to send a stray back to the neighbors. So, I was hooked at first by the thought of another suburban girl like myself falling for that tall dark stranger with the Wranglers. And for the most part I really enjoyed hearing about the courtship of these two unlikely souls. But my only complaint and why I didn't rate this book with an extra star, is that I felt it became a little too redundant, could have been a lot shorter without losing any of the story. In fact, it might have been better if it was edited a bit more.

Yes, vapid. Although that is precisely what I expected. My problem is, as has been said before, most of the book is already available for free on her blog. The new parts are rushed and appear to be written as a promotion for her cookbook. I highly doubt baked goods and stew played such a pivotol role in her acceptance of her new life as a mother and wife. I expected more thought and effort in the second "half". After all the promotion on her blog, I feel cheated by the complete lack of effort put into finishing the story. It seems as though the ending was just talked on to make the book long enough to justify publication. The author ought to be ashamed.