Word Gets Around

By: Lisa Wingate

Narrated by: Johanna Parker

Best-selling author Lisa Wingate serves up small-town values with humor and romance. Lauren hasn't returned to her hometown since her husband's death. But when her dad needs her help, she heads for their horse ranch in Daily, Texas. There she must prepare a "broke down" race horse for his role in a movie that will alter the fortunes of her dad, a Hollywood star, and a screenwriter.©2009 Wingate Media, LLC (P)2009 Recorded Books, LLC

On to #3!

Have enjoyed the 1st 2, looking forward to the next one. Easy listening, good narration and character development.

The message of the story about the good horseman.

The story was excellent and both readers are awesome. Lisa Windgate is one of my

Enjoyable

Another light listen. And woven through with horses. What could be any better?
Thank you!

GOOD STORY AND GOOD MESSAGE, BUT…

I normally LOVE just about everything Lisa Wingate writes. This was a good story with an excellent message about all creatures (human and otherwise) needing love, understanding and sometimes the chance to start over, but there were places in the book where I almost stopped listening and gave up on the book.

Why? It was all I could do to get through the over-exaggerated Texas twang — especially that of Aunt Danetta (combined with her very loud, high-pitched voice). A little of her would have gone a LONG way, but there was far too much of her character.

I find that kind of “twang” insulting — it makes people who speak like that appear uneducated and unintelligent — like “dumb bunnies,” and this is not the case at all. I do not understand why authors continue to promote this image of people from certain parts of the country. This character was just OBNOXIOUS to the point that I literally had to fast forward through most of her. AND the guy who stuttered SO badly!🤦‍♀️

I found it interesting that one of the main characters (Lauren), a college professor of anatomy didn’t have much of an accent (twang) when she first spoke on the phone with her father, then suddenly, her “twang” was quite pronounced before she even went home to be around her family.

I very much liked the character of Nate. He had a dry, witty personality and great self-depreciating sense of humor. I like a person who can laugh at themself. Nate was well aware of his own faults and was aware that his childhood friend, the famous Justin Shay, was using him taking advantage of him, and he was allowing him to manipulate him against his better judgment out of a sense of loyalty and because he truly cared about what happened to the friend he grew up with in foster care.

Nate was the ONLY one who could be truly honest with Nate and tell him that he was obnoxious in a lot of ways, and completely lacking in his concern for anything or anyone other than himself in ALL ways and get away with it without instantly being fired. Nate was the only one who could keep Justin from completely destroying himself with drugs and by living a hard styled live 24/7. Nate, having lived and being raised under the same circumstances understood the pain Justin was hiding under his lifestyle choices, but Nate chose a better, more positive path in life and did as much as he could to get Justin off his self-destructive path and on to a more positive path along side himself. Justin had always been a screw-up, blaming others for his actions (or lack of them), and then taking the credit for all the work others did to make things turn out right, regardless of the cost to themselves, as long as “Justin was kept happy.” Justin recognized this wasn’t working for him any more and the relationship between them either had to change or end entirely, but Nate did everything he could to make this nearly impossible by continuing to be obnoxious.

Lauren made a spur of the moment decision to go home and help her father, even though it was the LAST thing she wanted to do. Lauren had ghosts from her past that she had not yet come to terms yet and still was not yet ready to face. Nate and Lauren recognized something that needed healing in each other and were able to help the other (without meaning to) through a horse who had been abused and whose spirit seemed to be broken beyond repair. The horse and Justin, both angry and distrustful were eventually able to come to some kind of a mutual agreement to tolerate each other, but it didn’t seem their relationship would ever progress beyond “tolerating,” which was Justin’s fault, because he refused to acknowledge how his actions and anger were making the horse react. As usual, Justin blamed the “stupid horse” for reacting to Justin’s behavior instead of taking any responsibility FOR his behavior.

This is a GOOD story — IF you can get by the obnoxiously loud Texas twang of Aunt Danetta. I am very glad I got this book for free and didn’t spend any money (or a credit on it). I only pushed through because I liked Nate and I REALLY wanted to know what became of the horse. 💕. Of course, there was a happy ending, but not until right up until the very end. This was an inspiring and uplifting book.

The story of gentle taming

There are some hokey characters with deep accents in this story, but seeing how all things worked together to bring hurting people, foster kids, and animals together (with some nudges from God) helped it work.