Review: The Wildest Ride

The Wildest Ride by Marcella Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

Tearing folks from their history was one of the ways to break them, so Lil's family had held on to theirs through their land---through cultural hostility, the dust bowl, outright deception, attempts to steal, and everything else that time and life had thrown their way. 

After her granddad dies, Lilian Sorrow Island learns that he took out a reverse mortgage on their ranch, Swallowtail, and now that the bereavement period is over, they need to start making payments on the 1.2 million dollar loan. The ranch is barely getting by but her grandma has a plan, have Lil compete in the new PBRA Close Circuit tour, a reality tv rodeo, tournament style, two month competition that will award the all around winner 1 million dollars. Lil competed in the INFR and always dreamed of riding bulls in the PBR but they wouldn't accept women at the time. This is a chance to save her ranch and live out her dream. 

Huge, rough, layered, and callused, they were the hands of a man who let go of something only when he was ready to. 

The PBRA's most decorated cowboy, AJ Garza, has been on a retirement tour around the world for the last three years. When he learns the organization, CityBoyz, that took him in as a troubled youth, headed by Henry “The Old Man” and one of the best Black cowboys to compete in the PBRA, lost their biggest donor and needs money, he decides to come out of retirement and enter the closed circuit tour to win the prize money for them. Not knowing what to do with his life after rodeo, it's the perfect opportunity to stay in the game. After he watches the new guy, Lil Sorrow, get the highest score on the first competition of bronc riding, he's excited for the first real competition he's had in years. When the new guy turns out to be a woman, AJ finds himself drawn for a new reason. 

She needed to take herself in hand. She had strict rules, both about rodeo cowboys and mixing work with pleasure, and all of them could be summed up in one word: no. 

The Wildest Ride, is first in debut author Marcella Bell's Closed Circuit series and had the a love letter to the west feel of a Beverly Jenkins and the family and friends cast of characters and sexy loving moments of a Lori Foster. The setting and elements of rodeo are truly the fabric that becomes the backbone to the story, especially in the beginning. It's not really until 35% that the romance kicks in between Lil and AJ but I loved how the rodeo/ranching elements gave the story an overall stripped down feel. 

Lil has lived the majority of her life on the ranch, raised by her grandparents after her teenage mom refused to name the cowboy who got her pregnant and then ends up dying when Lil is four years old. The pain of feeling abandoned has made her develop trust issues, especially with men. Her grandma and the other two who help on the ranch, cousin Tommy and ranch hand Piper, are the only people she lets in. Lil is our grumpy and AJ is our sunshine. AJ grew-up in Houston and after his father died, he had anger issues that had his mom sending him to CityBoyz, an inner city youth program, there he learned a love for rodeo and a natural talent for it. He's thirty-six to Lil's twenty-seven and has vast experience in dealing with the press and whole song and dance involved with a reality tv show. Lil grew-up watching AJ and had a crush on him but she's the real rancher to his “city boy” and AJ still has some things to learn in that arena. They constantly are neck and neck in the competitions, keeping them aware of each other. 

She sighed in his ear, whispering back, willing to be open and soft in another language, “Apurate, vaquero, he estado esperandote a toda mi vida.” 

The closed circuit tournament worked to keep these two together but pace of the competition felt a little disjointed at times. The competition isn't the main focus, it intermittently gets focused on and for it being the glue that holds our couple together, it never fully fit right for me. What I did enjoy a lot was how easy, sweet, and sexily taunting AJ could be with Lil and how her grumpiness delighted and egged him on. Lil's tough but AJ teasingly coaxing her out of her cocoon created some sweet scenes. There's not a ton of bedroom scenes but the author takes her time when they are there and I found them all the better for it, more of that stripped down feeling. 

He took a step closer and she tilted her chin up to keep eye contact. “Stop this foolishness,” he said. “Take me home with you.” 

Something sharp and scared flashed through her eyes but was gone in an instant. “You won't stay.” 

He leaned in bringing his lips closer to hers, and she strained up toward him, even if she wasn't aware of it. 

“I will.” He spoke softly, his mouth only inches from hers. 

This felt more like a story, an experience, that I let myself sink into, there's substantial aspects to capture your heart and mind; Lil's Muscogee heritage, family drama, history with INFR and PBRA, and Lil being a woman competing. Individually Lil outshone AJ for me a bit but he's what made them shine as a couple. There were some conversations that I thought were repeated and slowed down the story in the middle, a late reveal that didn't get the time needed to feel emotionally satisfying, and a, somewhat, abrupt ending. This is first in a series, so the CityBoyz storyline is probably going to be the continuing connection but for how heedful the rest of the story was paced, it made the ending feel rushed. This was an impressive debut that felt stripped down in its quietness, I felt the blood, sweat, tears, and skill in rodeo and ranching, my eyes watered out of nowhere with Lil fighting to remind everyone that “girls had try”, and the grumpy/sunshine romance delivered the sweet. There are a couple secondary characters that I'm hoping will get their own books in this series (Piper, please!), I'm pretty sure I caught a tease for AJ's friend Diablo and the rodeo queen Sierra and I'll definitely be in line to read them. Also, make sure to read the author's note at the end.

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