Corralling Callie

By: Amelia Smarts

Narrated by: Gideon Welles

Length: 3 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

For 18-year-old orphan Callie Broderick, going west as a mail-order bride seems to be the only hope she has for a decent husband. But when she sets out for the gold-mining town of Sacramento with nothing more than the clothes on her back and a stagecoach ticket, she quickly discovers that the trip will be quite a bit different than she expected.

As a former soldier and an experienced coachman, Jude Johnson is used to difficulties and dangers of all kinds during the arduous journey west, but he has never had to deal with trouble like Callie before. Not being the kind of man to kick a penniless orphan off his coach, he puts up with the sassy, disobedient girl for as long as he can, but when Callie's antics put the lives of his passengers at risk Jude is forced to take matters into his own hands and spank her soundly.

The stern punishment leaves her thoroughly chastened and promising to behave, and Jude soon realizes that when she puts aside her foul-mouthed, defiant façade, the real Callie is as sweet and kind as she is beautiful. As the days pass, he takes it upon himself to guide her, care for her, and give her the loving discipline she so desperately needs, as often as she needs it. But when they reach their destination, will he be able to give her up?

Publisher's note: Corralling Callie includes sexual scenes and spankings. If such material offends you, please don't buy this book.

©2016 Stormy Night Publications (P)2017 Amelia Smarts

Gideon Welles has a New Fan!

Corralling Callie

The good: The narrator, Gideon Welles is fantastic. His deep, strong voice made the portrayal of rough-and-tumble, former soldier Jude Johnson was to be expected. However, his ability to perform a sensitive, timid, abused 18-year-old orphan – Callie Broderick seemed to come just as naturally. His performances are brilliant.

The not so good: I had difficulty in believing this was an HISTORIC book, at times. 'Callie's' behavior was also confusing to me, given her past.

Sometimes one is looking for a 'naughty' book without a complex story. This book would be great for that mindset.

Overall this book was not for me, but I am willing to give the author another chance. And I will not hesitate to pick up a book narrated by Gideon Welles.

Business:

*I received this work in exchange for my review; good, bad or meh. I've written all 3 kinds.

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Exceptional Performance

This is a noncomplicated story where the young hellian gets her bottom spanked quite often. The narrator couldn't be better!

Discipline on the Way West

I’m going to state right here at the very beginning that this will not be a book for everyone – even those who like historical romance might not find this to their tastes. Please take this disclaimer to heart before choosing to read this novel.

This is a very different kind of romance story; interwoven throughout the plot are elements of domestic discipline, particularly spanking (and not necessarily the erotic type, although that does come into play later on the novel for sure). On its face, I have no issues with that as an element, when used correctly and within a historical setting, because that was a more normalized way of life in the 1800s and on the frontier of the American West. I would have a much more difficult time with reading a story with these elements set within the modern day because that is not the typical way of life now. So knowing that, I left my modern sensibilities checked at the door when starting this book. With that out of the way, I did still have one issue that kept nagging at me throughout the entire story – this man who was doling out the discipline wasn’t her husband/boyfriend/father, quite honestly he was a complete stranger, which just felt sort of wrong to me. Yes, the author does go to a length to make the reasons known for why the male lead thinks it is his job to take the heroine to task for her wild ways, but it wasn’t quite believable enough for me to buy into this element of the story.

Moving on from that element, I did actually enjoy how the story unfolded, despite its brief length. I felt that I had a solid sense of who Callie was throughout the novel, even if a good portion of her backstory wasn’t revealed until right near the end. I still understood her motivations for heading out West to seek a husband and how she made many mistakes, but usually had the best intentions at heart. She is young, willful, and naïve. Jude comes off as your somewhat typical very masculine cowboy. He is strong and a no-nonsense straight-shooter. I didn’t have quite as much of a complete sense of who he was as a person, compared with Callie, but for me, his personality came off much larger than life and I didn’t feel like I needed as much to frame him in my mind.

This wasn’t exactly what I was hoping for from the novel, but it was a good read.

About the audiobook:
Gideon Welles was an excellent fit for voicing Jude in my opinion. He certainly came off as the weather-beaten cowboy and I bought into his character. I think that this helped frame his character in my mind despite having less actual information/story on the man himself. The exact opposite was true for his voicing of Callie. His voice has a difficult tone to try and replicate a woman’s in any way. This was unfortunate as at least half the novel takes place in Callie’s head and it would have been easier to get into her character with a more convincing voice. One issue I did have was with the pacing of the narration. The speed with which it was read was fine, however, Welles seemed to take pauses at some of the strangest locations within the text – places where it wouldn’t have even been appropriate for a comma/pause. I found myself getting hung up with this reading pattern because I would be anticipating a sentence to have reached its end only to find it pick back up again.

short and sweet and hot

What made the experience of listening to Corralling Callie the most enjoyable?

This was a good story, and kept me interested through out.

At first I wasn't sure about the narration and it took a little bit to get use to, but I did and enjoyed the book fully.

I do enjoy Western Romances, so this had the added excitement.

Trying to keep in mind that Callie is only 18, Jude was very gentle to her, (besides the spankings), but done as a discipline and not in a BDSM way at first.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Corralling Callie?

Without giving anything way, the ending of course :).

Which scene was your favorite?

Meeting JJ

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Giddy Up.

Any additional comments?

I was voluntarily provided this free review copy audiobook by the author, narrator, or publisher.”

Capivating delight!

Bring out the big guns because here comes a real wild west story.
Amelia Smarts' Corralling Callie was pantie melting, exhilarating and absolutely fantastic!

Callie is a young woman headed West to meet her future husband. She is a mail order bride, and her future is in the unknown, to say the least, but she is filled with joy and happy expectations and nothing is going to bring her down. That is until she has to interact with the other passengers on the coach that is bringing them all to Sacramento. Coachman Jude is doing what he can to make it as pleasant a journey for all of them as possible, but sometimes even his calm temper can't handle the little firecracker. And he is forced to be very stern with her.

I just fell in love with Callie from the first moment we met her. The way she was mistreated for so many years and didn't really know how to be around people was absolutely heartbreaking. You never knew if what she told was the truth or just a story to make other people like her more. She was an old soul in a young woman's body.

Jude was the calm sea that gave Callie comfort and kept her safe. He was also the person that cared so much about her that he wanted to do almost anything to help her. He ended up giving her some very hard spankings to make her change her ways.

I loved this story!!

Well, but I didn't read it. I heard it on Audible. The story was told by Gideon Wells, and he was amazing! His voice was like liquid sex in my ears, and I could listen to it forever!
He made the story come to life in front of me. Oh boy, did he make my heart go all crazy! Swoon!!

This won't be the last time I listen to Corralling Callie. I'm a huge fan of Amelia Smarts and her writing. But Gideon Wells just corralled me too, and I will definitely be keeping an eye out for him. His voice makes all my princess parts tingle.

To fans of sexy cowboy spanking, read out loud by a über sexy and tantalizing voice this is a must-listen.

I received this audiobook as part of my participation in a blog tour with Audiobookworm Promotions. The tour is being sponsored by Amelia Smarts. The gifting of this audiobook did not affect my opinion of it.

Delightful

Callie needed taming. She is an 18 year old orphan/mail order bride on her way to Sacramento to get married but nobody has taught her how to behave in polite society. Her punishment for misbehavior in the orphanage up until the beginning of this story was to be locked in a closet for long periods of time.
Jude is the coachman taking her to Sacramento and he cares for her and teaches her a thing or two about life.
They begin to have feelings for each other and ... You will either have to read the book or listen to the audio version to find out what happens.
It is a delightful story and the narration by the gravelly voiced Gideon Welles is great.
I hope you will enjoy it as much as I have.
I was supplied with the audiobook version by the author and this is my unbiased and honest review.

I so wanted to like it...

What did you like best about Corralling Callie? What did you like least?

I really enjoyed the story line. Orphan turns to mail order bride and falls in love with the driver on her way out west. It seems like it is going to be so good. There were parts i enjoyed, but I could not get away from how much of a brat Callie was. Her habitual lying, putting her wants before the safety of others, and her stupidity/ naivete had me gnashing my teeth at times.

Would you ever listen to anything by Amelia Smarts again?

Yes. While this book was ok, i am hoping that her other works will be better.

What three words best describe Gideon Welles’s voice?

A bit robotic

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

Probably not, at least not without a few rewrites

Any additional comments?

This audio book was graciously provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost in exchange for an unbiased review

Mail order bride book with a firm hand

Amelia Smarts books have a touch of humor along with an alpha male with a firm hand. This story is another enjoyable story. The narrator has a wonderful deep western sound, and I enjoyed him.

Headstrong girl meets Disciplinarian older man

A headstrong orphan finds freedom on a stagecoach headed south to California. On the way to meet the man she's agreed to marry, she falls for the stagecoach driver who puts her in her place with a firm but loving hand.

"I was given this free review copy audiobook at my request and have voluntarily left this review."

Nice read

Is there anything you would change about this book?

make the speaking rate faster, and add a female voice

Did Gideon Welles do a good job differentiating all the characters? How?

mostly, he is really good, just not amazing with female voices. But I like his style

Was Corralling Callie worth the listening time?

Yes

Any additional comments?

I got a free copy of this book in return for an unbiased review