I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Cute, original idea, colorful pictures were the pluses. The negatives: very wordy and the story didn't really develop well. I think kids will like it, but adults not as much.

I really enjoyed the illustrations. They were really quite beautiful. The story just wasn’t for me.

Rowdy Randy is a colorful picture book depicting an average day in the Wild West through the eyes of a rather large, rambunctious female horsefly who lives to stir up trouble. In beautiful, gallery-worthy, fully-painted illustrations, we follow Randy as she buzzes the cows and bulls and other animals, even narrowly missing some fatal blowback from an angry fish and nest of rattlesnakes less than thrilled with her attention. Personal highlight: Randy bronco-busting a cranky lizard, which kids should love. While the story seems a bit light even for a picture book (and seemingly - of all things - ends on a cliffhanger no less), Randy is the rootinest-tootinest horsefly in the west, and the lively artwork alone vividly brings her day to life. 3.5/5 stars

Note: I received a free ARC of this title from NetGalley and the publisher, in exchange for an honest review.

Randy is a horsefly. She wants to be a cowgirl. As she goes from place to place she causes trouble on her adventure. However she isn’t satisfied until she causes a cattle stampede! Will she survive the stampede? Is she finally the cowgirl she wants to be?

The story is exquisitely told. It has great colored illustrations throughout the book. It’s a fun and positive book to read. I liked that Randy never gave up her being a cowgirl.

Rowdy Randy by Casey Rislov is an amusing look at life through the eyes of a cowgirl horsefly. One events after another has Randy looking for a desperado to challenge or annoy. Frankly the in your face attitude of Randy is exactly how I would expect a horsefly to behave. Nevertheless the cliffhanger ending lets the reader decide if Randy annoying days are coming to an end.

The style of writing is not a rhyming format but once I figured that out the story flowed pretty well reading it aloud to my four-year-old granddaughter. I guess I found the main character to be a surprise but she wasn’t at all surprised to read a fictional account of a day in the life of the toughest horsefly. She also liked the illustrations which are colorfully dramatic, with Randy’s annoyance of the dog to be her favorite.

My granddaughter enjoyed the story which is one of my criteria for rating but another is a theme to the book. I am not really sure of any big idea that this story has. Is it that all things even annoying ones have a purpose in the world, or simply to entertain the reader? Does this story have lasting value, I really couldn’t say. Four stars is how she rated it so I will go along with that.

I must have read a different book from all the other reviewers that thought this was the greatest picture book they had ever read, ye haw.

The illustrations of the various animals you might encounter in the west are quite lovely.

<img src="https://g2comm.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/rowdy-randy.png" alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-5367" />

But alas, that is not what the story is about. The story is about a cowgirl horsefly who wears green eyeshadow. Sparkly green, in fact. Because, of course that is what horseflies would wear.

The story, what there is to it, is that Randy gets up every morning, and bothers animals, until, she is captured by a human, and looks as though that is the end.

I can't think that kids would enjoy this, but by all the reviews, apparently, they do. I guess it just doesn't work for me.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.

I wanted to like this one more than I did. It sounds like a fun premise. The problem is... there's no story.

Rowdy Randy is a horsefly. She wears chaps and cowboy boots and glittery green eyeshadow (the picture that was chosen for the cover isn't the best; it's relatively unappealing, compared to the rest of Zachary Pullen's fun illustrations within). Each day, Rowdy Randy looks for critters to annoy. I think. I had to go back and reread the beginning to try to figure out what the setup was. As far as I can tell, that's all the story this book has going for it: the horsefly encounters a bunch of different animals and... well, maybe she tries to annoy them, but in a lot of cases she's trying to engage with them. So I'm not entirely sure what the point of the book is. To show that horseflies are annoying? What a waste of the cute illustrations!

This could've really been something special with a better story. To make matters worse, the book ends abruptly with what appears to be a cliffhanger. The last words are literally, "Is this how it ends?" Well, we have no idea! The next page has a picture of Rowdy Randy riding a jackalope, as if nothing happened. I... don't get it.

The pictures are lovely and fun, and the writing is surprisingly good for a self-published work. There's just the little matter of there not being a story. For a reader, that's kind of difficult to overlook.