Lost and Found by Nicole Williams

Lost and Found

Author: Nicole Williams

Published: May 6^th, 2013

Summary:

There’s complicated. And there’s Rowen Sterling. 

After numbing pain for the past five years with boys, alcohol, and all-around apathy, she finds herself on a Greyhound bus to nowhere Montana the summer after she graduates high school. Her mom agreed to front the bill to Rowen’s dream art school only if Rowen proves she can work hard and stay out of trouble at Willow Springs Ranch. Cooking breakfast at the crack of dawn for a couple dozen ranch hands and mucking out horse stalls are the last things in the world Rowen wants to spend her summer doing. 

Until Jesse Walker saunters into her life wearing a pair of painted-on jeans, a cowboy hat, and a grin that makes something in her chest she’d thought was frozen go boom-boom. Jesse’s like no one else, and certainly nothing like her. He’s the bright and shiny to her dark and jaded. 

Rowen knows there’s no happily-ever-after for the golden boy and the rebel girl—happily-right-now is a stretch—so she tries to forget and ignore the boy who makes her feel things she’s not sure she’s ready to feel. But the more she pushes him away, the closer he seems to get. The more she convinces herself she doesn’t care, the harder she falls. 

 When her dark secrets refuse to stay locked behind the walls she’s kept up for years, Rowen realizes it’s not just everyone else she needs to be honest with. It’s herself. 

*Recommended for mature readers due to moderate language and sexuality. * 

Review:

I picked up Lost and Found on a whim after seeing so many people talking about it. I couldn’t have been more satisfied. When I first started reading it, Rowen intrigued me a lot. I’ve never gone to the extreme to change appearance, but I have always hid my true feelings. Before finding out what really happened, Rowen just seemed like a girl who was ‘lost’ and just needed to find her way. For her to really go through with what her mother was making her do also showed how strong you really was and how passionate she was for her love of art.

When Jesse walked in, I had to reread the description a few times. Cowboys have a soft spot in my heart and he just seemed like too good to be true. I had my fingers crossed the whole time hopefully that he didn’t turn out to be an arrogant jerk. To my relief, he didn’t and it just made me fall in love with him move. He’s sweet, caring, and always knew what the right thing to say was. He was very passionate for what he did, the farm, and his family. As the story went on and you met the Walker family, I felt like was part of the family. Rose, Jesse’s mom, was the sweetest of all moms that I have read about. She was smart and an amazing mentor. Even though she had no idea what Rowen had been through, she knew it was something and she told her to be who she was. You didn’t see lot of her, but when you did, she gave you the best advice.

          When they introduced Garth, at first I was intrigued again, because he was a cowboy… a dangerous cowboy. Dangerous and sexy cowboys just make everything better. When he tried to muck things up for the growing romance for Rowen and Jesse I wanted to scream. I hated everything about him in that second. I understand being bitter with life when life has handed you nothing, but you don’t need to bring others down with you.

I read this book from cover to cover in two days. I couldn’t put it down and I can’t wait to start reading the next one in the series.  The plot and story were well written. I don’t think the story was rushed, but I do wish we could have seen a little bit more of the beginning of their growing relationship. I’m hoping with the next book we get that.

Favorite Quotes:

“We all have secrets, Rowen. Every last person on the planet. And you know what else? We all experience the same kinds of things. We just go through them at different times and to different degrees.” -Jesse

“We want to open up to someone, Rowen. The hard part is finding someone we trust enough to open up to. That person we’re not afraid to let into the darkest parts of our world.” -Jesse