Customer Reviews

Try

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love a book that lets me live somewhere I never could have gone otherwise. TRY brings the world of rodeo cowboys and the women who love them to life. You're not gonna want to leave. I also love a writer who can really WRITE, and Lily Burana is a marvel.

Nerve has an excerpt of TRY online, and I ordered it because I thought this would be a hot, naughty read. It is sexy, but it's so much more. So romantic and uncynical and full of scenes that transported me out of my life and into the West, with sights, sounds, and subtle details. "Trite" if you don't like romance, maybe. Lent out my copy already and know I'll have to beg to get it back. Guys might not like the book, but any girl who's ever been she-masculated will get it, devour it, and love it.

I can think of a dozen reasons to love this book -- its vivid, lively, sometimes bone-crunching depiction of the world of cowboys and rodeos, its frank, fearless eroticism, a storyline that's so compelling you're resentful when the world intrudes and you have to put the book down.

But if there were one reason above all I'd recommend this book, it would be this -- its brazen, optimistic, uncynical heart. The world is too full of self satisfied fiction, of authors who create characters just to snidely make sport of them. Imagine then, a story of flawed, vulnerable people who are still appealing, one as full of passion as the characters themselves. Daryl Heatherly paints because she loves to paint. J. Dub rides because he loves to ride. And Lily Burana writes like a writer who loves to write -- and we're all the luckier for it.

Looking over a few of the other reviews I wonder if I did read the same book as others! I am an avid reader, LOVE chic lit, the sexier the better.

I went to great lengths finding and ordering this book in time for a recent trip to Colorado. I always get in the mood for good 'cowboy' love stories when I am in Colorado. I couldn't wait to get into this book and was sorely disappointed once I started!! I found it quite boring, not very believable and quite hard to finish. I was honestly glad when it was done and sorry I wasted the effort to get it, the cash to purchase it and most of all, the time in reading it.

At turns stunning, steamy and poignant, Try is a multifaceted gem. Daryl Heatherly is a nuanced and realistic protaganist, and her lover JW is an appealingly calloused New West warrior. What's not to love?

Lily Burana's craftmanship is airtight, but her unique prose style is never labored or overcooked. It's this effortless fluidity that makes Try such an achievement. Whether she's describing a cinematic Wyoming vista or a risque body piercing, Burana conjures unforgettable images with ease. Every paragraph is gorgeous.

Try is a great American romance with a Western tang. Highly recommended!

Now I may be a Texan but I know nothing about rodeo, except that bit about 8 seconds, and I really was never that interested. BUT this book is fabulous. In the beginning the idea of 23 year old Daryl and 41 year old JW threw me but the story builds and you route for them. Yes there's a great deal of story dealing with the rodeo but it sets up who JW is. I thought the story was great and I want to read everything by this author. There was an Emma Holly feel to her book- the Black Lace Emma Holly. A must read for any romance/erotica reader.

What more could someone ask for in a book. This is one of the most refreshing books I've read in a long time. I could not put it down. It has everything-action, cowboys, and love.
I highly recommend this book and think most you will have a hard time putting it down once they have started reading it.

Artist Daryl Heatherly leaves the Denver area to return to her family home in the Cheyenne, Wyoming vicinity. She and her brother Jace plan to sell the place. However on the drive, Daryl thinks about how poorly she chooses relationship having figuratively burned her last one with reverse snob Alex whom she met two years ago at Colorado State.

At the Bluffs Ranch in Wyoming, Daryl meets world champion rodeo fortyish cowboy J.W. Jarrett. He behaves like a perfect gentleman though he is attracted to the enthusiastic girl half his age. She, in turn, finds his gentle romantic old west manner enticing. In spite of her sibling's strong objection of her dating a cowboy twice her age and her friend warning her that J.W. suffers from relationship phobia because of all his groveling groping groupies, they become an entry as they travel the circuit together. Still she has doubts as she wants independence not dependence on both their parts so J.W. knows he must continue to get off the dirt and TRY to convince his beloved that their May-December love is forever.

The background rodeo circuit is vibrant as the dust, bruises, and injuries of those participating in the circuit and their beloved family members accompanying them provide a strong setting reminiscent of the Wide World of Sports. The lead couple is a fascinating pairing of an older man with a younger woman but both their closest friends and family believe it is wrong yet love makes it so right so each understands they must TRY. Readers will appreciate this delightful "old west" contemporary romance that showcases (The Wide World of Sports) "the thrill of victory", "the agony of defeat" and "the human drama of athletic competition" in the rodeo and in life.

Harriet Klausner

I finished this book yesterday, and have been wrestling a bit with how to characterize it... how to rate it, etc. Overall, I very much liked it. It was an interesting view into the modern west - most particularly the rodeo subculture. But what was a strength was at times a bit of a weakness since the details were so, well, detailed, that the book felt like it dragged in parts with descriptive overload. On the one hand, this helped really set the stage so the reader could envision the different settings, but for me it was a bit too much. I think the book could have been tigthened up considerably by pulling back a bit on the details, shortening it without losing too much.

Also - and this is more of a personal preference - I am not a big fan of first-person narratives when it comes to fiction, and IMO if it had been told in an alternate voice, I think the book would have been even better. I would have loved much more insight into what JW was truly thinking and feeling. The author did as good a job as she could with dialogue and the insights that Daryl had into him, but I still felt too distant from him. Also, Daryl's brother, Jace, was quite an interesting character - but again the reader did not get close enough to him becuase of the restrictions of Daryl telling the story from her personal vantage point.

In the end, I'm glad I read it. I'd even recommend it. But I couldn't help feeling by the end that it could have been that much more amazing.

I am not much of a reader and when TRY fell in my hands I read it in about 9 hours. I could not put the book down. Being a best friend to a PRCA cowboy and years of Rodeoing myself and living on a Ranch, Try is the closest thing to reality I have ever read. I felt like I was there in the moment through the whole book! I hope there is more where that came from!!