This tale of rangeland life has a feel of the 'Little House' books, in that the adventure consists of a young couple marrying and making a home for themselves in Utah. Catana from an orphanage marries Bo the son of a printer, and with his inheritance they buy a sheep farm and settle in to raise a family, more considerate of the feelings of others than the others are of their feelings.

The title NEVER YOURS comes from Bo's father telling him that if offered a free meal, he must earn it by washing the dishes - anything unearned is never yours. We meet Bo Giles first in a doctor's office getting a cheap tonsillectomy and his full name is not told to us so I'm guessing it's Beauregard. Here he sets eyes on the love of his life, whom he weds after a nineteen-day courtship. Much later in the book we get the date of 1917. Details are in some places provided and in others not, so the tale can be hard to pin down, or fills pages with conversation devoid of more than one line of setting. Coyotes raid the flock after the first three easy years, and a local lady's library is also raided, so living is not trouble-free. Then a bunch of swindlers try buying up local ranches and they're not averse to using threats.

The main problem I had with this book was pinning down the reader age for whom it was written. The style comes across as for a twelve-year-old who's read Laura Ingalls Wilder. Sheep are described to us as "Mr and Mrs and all the cute little babies impersonating mammals in training." The content however would not enthuse youngsters after the first few chapters of adult chat, baby raising and sheep farming, some of which the author says were stories told to her by her parents when she entered a competition to write a novel. These varied and interesting tales might be more relevant to seniors who want to recall old times. Now she's got the first novel out of the way, I hope Connie Smith settles down to pick an audience in the more accustomed modern style, as I'm sure she has a lot more stories to tell.