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Leena Riley is a plus-sized model with some big problems. She left behind Rock Creek, Pennsylvania at eighteen with big dreams and an even bigger desire to get the heck out of Dodge. She became a moderately successful model in Chicago, only to spend money faster than she made it. Then her agent fires her and with nowhere else to turn, Leena heads back to Rock Creek to lick her wounds. To make the situation even more humiliating, she stretched the truth just a tad and her older sister has been regaling the good townsfolk with stories of Leena’s supermodel success.

Leena wants to be in Rock Creek for as little time as humanly possible, which means landing a job. Not an easy task given that the small, working-class community has been slowly dying for years. She hates the idea, but given her very limited options, she takes a receptionist job at the local animal clinic. The same local animal clinic run by sexy veterinarian, Cole Flannigan. The same Cole Flannigan who, despite being two years younger, made fun of her in school. She did punch him, knocked him out cold even, but that has done little to soothe her ego. It certainly doesn’t help matters that Cole is sexy, charming, and determined to flirt with her at every turn.

Leena has gotten through life on the motto “fake it until you make it.” So even if she hates her thunder thighs, and is a little bruised thanks to her poor, trailer trash upbringing, she’s going to act like a fabulous supermodel gosh darn it. She’s going to whip Cole’s office into shape, put the nasty town harpy in her place, try to survive her sister’s eccentric ways, and make it out of town before succumbing to Cole’s devilish charms. What works so well here is that Leena doesn’t wallow for long, and never lets her emotional baggage weigh her down.

Unfortunately, as likable as Leena is, she’s stuck in an over-the-top wacky plot. Her sister is trying to force a relationship with the local high school football coach because he’s respectable, while she decorates her trailer in velvet Elvis paintings and panics about baking cupcakes. There’s the photo shoot Leena gets roped into for the local trailer park (sorry, “mobile home community”) wearing a see-through Regency-era-style dress, and wouldn’t you know it? There’s a wardrobe malfunction. There's the requisite vibrator scene, with Leena trying to get her malfunctioning one to work when Cole interrupts. Then there's the secondary character who hires a culinary student to be her lawyer when she gets a bee in her bonnet about suing Leena and Cole. I haven't even mentioned the pregnant llama and belly-dancing classes.

It's like climbing Mt. Wacky.

The problem with all this wackiness is that in exchange the hero gets the short shift. The reader never really learns more about Cole than he’s handsome, charming, a serial monogamist and doesn’t want to “settle down.” That’s it. That’s all. There ain’t no more. He’s a likable bloke, but without any added depth to his character, it’s hard to get invested in the romance. A shame, since the banter between Cole and Leena is quite good at times, and the more passionate scenes show a definite spark.

Big Girls Don’t Cry is Linz’s third single title contemporary romance, and the third to feature the residents of Rock Creek. It stands alone quite well, is not without its charms, but one mad-cap episode after another isn’t enough to diminish the fact that the hero needed a lot more attention. More man, less llama.

You can visit Cathie Linz here and buy this book here or here.