#TBRChallenge Review: Heart of the West

Heart of the West by Penelope Williamson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion.

I started this a couple days before August 19, TBRChallenge day, and what a sweet summer child I was thinking I could finish it on time. First off, it's 700 some pages but pre-reading slump Whiskey could have done it! Slowly coming out of slumplandia Whiskey didn't have a hope, PLUS holy god was I not prepared for the encompassing this story was going to deliver. August's theme was Backlist Banger, I went to the ancient artifacts on my bookcase from the 1900s and picked an author I hadn't read since days of yore. I notoriously don't read the synopsis after I put a book on my tbr, no matter how many years it was shelved, but slump, so I flipped it over and read this was a historical set in the West and our female main character was going to lust after her brother-in-law. Sounds like a Backlist Banger! I went in expecting hot tension in the beginning and a husband getting trampled by buffalo by 20%. Y'all. What I got was a Louis L'Amour-esque epic but make it women's fiction and romance styled. This spanned 12 years (ok, after doing the math, this surprises me, would have said 30 years lol) and had a historical romance husband that lingered around late enough that when something does happen, you'd almost wish it hadn't.

"It's not a lot," her mother was saying in a strained whisper. "Not more than a hundred dollars. But it would be a good start for you, should you ever need to run away someday from this man you are running off with now."

This starts 1879 in Boston as seventeen year old Clementine is setting up to run-off with a cowboy. We get that pull you in with the sense of a little bit of danger as it's obvious Clementine fears her dad and with her mom coming in and quietly aiding her. There's some internal flashbacks by Clementine as she remembers her preacher father striking her and all around trying to smother her spirit and make her be who he thinks a girl/woman should be and observations by Clementine as she grew-up watching how her mother was around her father. When her mother hands Clementine her saved up money, your eyes are going to water because you'll think about hows/whys her mother didn't use the money to save herself. It's a common theme throughout this story, commentary on societal structures and how they benefit some and not others. It was mostly focused on speaking to sexism but out west where Clementine encounters Native Americans, fallen women, and different nationality mail order brides, there was some racism discussions too. There were a couple times I felt Clementine started to fall into the white savior role but there are numerous point-of-views in this story and all the characters I mentioned get pretty/decent full mini-stories played out to fruition that was pleasantly surprising.

Clementine Kennicutt looked back to the house, to the window of the room that had been hers for all of her life. A flickering light flashed once and was gone—her mother lifting a candle in a brief and lonely farewell.

When Clementine runs off with Gus McQueen, her cowboy she met on the Boston streets when he runs her over on a bike, we get more internal flashbacks to why she made this choice. With a fun historical tidbit we learn a maid in Clementine's house shared her five cent Wide Awake Library's Wild West series novels with her (there was a scene where Clem's father finds out and fires the maid where Clementine is crying saying “you're my friend” that made you hurt for her loneliness). So, Clem's a naive seventeen year old with allusions of what a wild west life will be like. Also, Gus is twenty-five and there was a cringe moment where he asks her age and makes a comment like “lord help me”, and if such age differences disturb you, well, there wouldn't be an ignoring that.

There ain't a man out here who wouldn't give his left ballock to be gettin' the cook, housekeeper, laundress, and all-round slave that you're gonna be to your man. Yup, slave and broodmare and bedmate all done up in the starchy trappings of an honest-to-God lady—Christ, the wonder of it stretches the mind." She hooted a laugh. "Dearie, you ain't only a rarity, you're a damned luxury!"

When Clem makes it to Gus' ranch in Montana, the rose colored glasses start to come off when she sees how rough the “town” and little cabin Gus' home is. And that he co-owns the ranch with his brother, Zach Rafferty. Which, when Clem first sees Zach he's looking like he walked off a Stetson's commercial, so, girl, same. There's that instant animosity between them that comes with sexual tension and not wanting/being able to act on and hating that you feel that way. Zach's constantly on her that she won't make it a year out there and that drives Clem even more to make it.

"I won't accept your different ways, Mr. McQueen. Not all of them."
A startled look came into his eyes; then his mouth tightened. "You will if I say you will."
"I won't."

With the years that this spans, you're going to be able to see and feel Clem's growth, her coming into her own. As she gets older and more experience seeing the world and mingling with people from all different walks of life, she starts to question things. Like, why can't she be friends with Hannah, the retired fallen lady who now owns the brothel? For his part, Gus is mostly blustering with his disapproval, they do have a blow out, but Clem's got a grit spirit and she always thinks back to how her father stifled her and she won't go back to the feeling.

"Oh, God, God, how could I have known, how could I have known? Up until that moment, you see, he was the closest thing I'd found to you."

Around 25% we get Clem and Zach cracking more under their attraction and it's that teeth gritting tense. You have that initial gut reaction of don't betray your husband and brother like that with the great layered character work of understanding why these two feel towards each other the way they do. Clem was too young to know herself, let alone who she could and want to love, and Zach has lived a life where he spent years not growing up with his brother and under the care of an awful father. Their personalities just go together better with both of them wanting to face the grit and Gus always turning away to not have to deal with the “hard” stuff. Clem's too strong for Gus and meets her match in Zach. It's not that Gus is necessarily “bad” but he's just not the right one for her, I appreciated the author not easy demonizing Gus, making this more taunt push and pull for the reader.

And she felt a rage at virtuous women like herself, who condemned their own kind for the things that were done to them by men.

Around 50% we jump to 1883 with Clem having given birth, a scene that binds her and Zach together even more and frays that rope that has them hanging on. There's also more of giving time to other side characters, Hannah and Zach have their own, sort-of, romance, Erlan the Chinese mail-order bride comes into the picture along with two brothers from Cornwall, and Gus and Zach's father makes some appearances, along with some other minor characters. There's dedicated time to their povs and stories.

"I always think of Montana as a he, for this is every bit a man's place, and you will hate him in the way that only a woman can hate a man. You will hate the wind and the dirt and the miserable cold winters, hate his harsh strength and his lawless, violent ways. And then one day you will realize that you have come to love him fiercely in the midst of all your hate. Love him in a way that only a woman can love a man..."

The setting was also huge in this, I wouldn't say it romanticizes American West pathos, but it did make me think of my own sod house ancestors and what those women endured. The characters and story show you the reality of how tough it was, child deaths, injuries, and the lack of rights but it also touches on the wrongness of how these settlers treated Native Americans and hunted food supplies to almost extinction for sport. It will get the conversations in your head going about they were gritty tough and they did awful things.

Zach's internal goodbye thoughts to Gus:
He thought sometimes that Gus was so stupid blind he couldn't track a fat sow through a snowdrift. He wanted to grab his brother by the scruff of his neck and shout into his face: You big, dumb son of a bitch. I want to fuck your wife. I eat, breathe, sleep, and fuck thoughts of fucking your wife, and if you weren't such a big, dumb son of a bitch you'd see it.

Zach's spoken goodbye to Clem:
"Clementine," he said, and her name came out of him broken and mangled. "My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evenin' over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you."

Around 70% Zach realizes that rope is going to snap so in 1886, he leaves and we get more of Clem and Gus dynamics and trying to fit together when clearly Clem has just outgrown the marriage to him. But, circumstances being what they are, Clem makes it work and it's not to say there wasn't love between them, he just wasn't the best choice for her. There was also a quick little scene where the reader learns that Gus was aware of the reason for the tension between his wife and brother. I gasped, lol. But in true Gus character fashion, he just doesn't face it head on. Later on, Gus has this thought: “Sometimes he hated the strength he saw in her. Sometimes he thought he was married to a woman he didn't know, and didn't like.”
And I thought, bingo. “he hated the strength he saw in her.”

She looked from one dear friend to another. Saphronie, in her satin whore's dress, with her tears inked permanently on her face for all the world to see and shudder over. Erlan, in her blue quilted Oriental robe and English croquet sandals, with her homesick eyes. And Clementine... Clementine, looking so very Bostonian in a plain black muslin mourning dress with a high, stiff cleric collar, looking so very sad. How different we all are, Hannah thought. And yet how much the same, in all our woman's sorrows and fears and vulnerabilities. In all our woman's strengths, to have endured what we have.

I really liked the women bonding in this and it's clear in the story that they all needed each other and the different strengths each one brought to the table to survive the west. Also, as a little bonus, our Hannah gets an HEA with a younger man. There was also great heart hurting commentary on motherhood: She is all that I once had it in me to be, Clementine often thought, before my father and life beat it out of me. And she worried for her little girl's future. She wished she could wrap Sarah up against the pain that was coming as easily as she had bundled her up against the cold. For as sure as night ended even the sunniest of days, life would try to break her daughter's spirit. The world was cruel to little girls who didn't want to please, and to grown-up women who bravely spoke out and went their own way.

"It's hard, Clementine. Hard for a man to look into a woman's eyes and see love lookin' back at him. And to know that when she's lookin' at him, she's seeing not what he is, but what he ought to be."

Like I mentioned in the beginning, what you go in immediately wanting to happen, doesn't until around 80% and I was more sad than I thought I would be, kudos to the author. It's not until 1891 that Zach returns, four years after Gus is gone and seven years gone total. There's a period of feeling out between the two, both have grown even more and I think some fear of finally might be able to act on such deep feelings. The end also jammed in some economic and environmental plot that I felt intruded on Clem and Zach time in a way but also felt so timely with how the women are the ones to step up and initiate change, a women's march 1890s style.
So yeah, this story was a lot and the chunk of Clem and Zach's relationship is going to be individual character internal with the reader having to feel what is not said (I think the author accomplished it, I felt that fraying rope). If you're looking for a historical western romance that feels like an epic, willing to go on many journeys with different characters, and take the time to watch a character grow from naive seventeen to coming into her own, this would be one to hunt up.

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Review: Love Is a War Song

Love Is a War Song by Danica Nava
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

2.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

I was public enemy number one. 

Love is a War Song was about a Disney childstar actress trying to grow into becoming a pop star but getting wrapped up in a media frenzy when she showcases her Muscogee heritage in an ignorant way on the cover of Rolling Stone. If you're a fan of Hannah Montana vibes, then you'd probably enjoy this more than I did, it read and came across in a young way to me that I had trouble getting into. 

We were in on the joke. Taking back this Native maiden stereotype. Reclaiming it. But it backfired, because of my ignorance. It wasn’t powerful. It was problematic. 

Avery's only ever known her mother, who's also her manager, for family. She's constantly being pushed by her mom and has no real idea about her Native American heritage. When she dresses in a war bonnet for Rolling Stone, social media goes into a frenzy condemning and arguing if she has a right to wear it. When it looks like her new record deal could be in danger, her mom decides that she should go escape to Avery's grandmother's ranch in Oklahoma. There, the story has Avery trying to learn about her family, being a fish out of water, and arguing and getting turned on by a cowboy on the ranch, Lucas. 

Under these stars, I wasn’t disgraced singer Avery Fox. Right now, I was just a girl (with terrible insomnia) free to do whatever I wanted. 

This was told from Avery's point-of-view and for the first half, I honestly felt like I knew more about her Golden Goose shoes than Lucas. The second half we get Avery inserting herself into Lucas' family drama by pretending to be his girlfriend and going to a family dinner with him. Readers finally learn some about him, he comes from money but has disappointed his father by “only” becoming a ranch hand, and had addiction problems in the past but he's now clean and sober. Their relationship was a lot of Lucas eye-rolling at Avery because he doesn't like how she utilizes her Native American heritage in her celebrity persona and how helpless and naive she is on the ranch, Avery likes to poke at him because he comes off stuffy to her, but there's always the looking at each other's lips factor. There were some rom-com moments ran through for lighter moments and Avery wanting desperately for her grandmother to talk to her about not only her immediate family history but also cultural for some emotional pings. 

Love is a war song, a battle cry. Something to fight for. And I would fight for us. 

Between fish out of water scenes, Avery does slowly start to learn not only about her culture but about herself, and a big event comes up where Avery had to decide if she wanted to continue on the same path or make an effort to live a more true life. I was looking for more emotional depth while this had a lighter, younger, vibe to it, so a different audience, the aforementioned Hannah Montana fans, would more than likely end up enjoying this more.

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Review: Silver Lining

Silver Lining by Maggie Osborne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I buddy read this over on Storygraph, but a few thoughts and feelings... 

In the end, their marriage was everyone's fault and no one's fault. 

For a book that started off with oozing pustules and vomit, this had my eyes watering at times. This is only my second Maggie Osborne (The Wives of Bowie Stone) but I'm catching a theme, hard tough exterior women with hurt vulnerable insides who survived trauma, and I am here for it. 

I'm going to be labeled a son of a bitch, and you're going to be seen as an unscrupulous temptress. At least in the beginning." 

Her eyebrows soared."Me? A temptress?" It was the most thrilling thing she'd ever heard. 

This starts off with the aforementioned vomit as Low Down is the only person that has stayed in the small gold mining town to take care of all the small pox sick. After the men recover, they need to find a way to repay her and ask her what her one wish is, Low Down replies with “have a baby”. This leads to the men drawing a marble marked with an X to see who will marry Low Down and give her a baby. You'd think all these men would be jumping at the chance to “poke” Low Down but remember the little thing of no indoor plumbing and Low Down has never cared for her appearance and, you know what, just go with it, lol. 

Instead, a solitary silver spoon stood against the wallpaper in the center of the mantel, propped against a scratched pewter watch case. 

One of the men Low Down took care of was Max and even though he's leaving the town that night to return to his fiancée, he gets pushed into the drawing. (I know, just go with it). Low Down knows Max from the letters to his fiancée and has a desire to be wanted like that and finds him good looking, so there's a little bit of foundation that from her that she'd be open to him. He, of course, draws the x marble and we have a forced marriage. 

But take a hard look, son. When you see that woman working up a sweat pitching hay like a hired hand … you're looking at character. 

Max doesn't treat her awful but he's cold and moody because his fiancée was a rich girl who's dad runs the town where Max's family ranch is and he knows the repercussions are going to be huge. As they journey and arrive at Max's ranch, we get the two talking and start to see the slow build of friendship that even more slowly builds to romantic attraction. Max spends some time with his head up his butt because of an unforeseen surprise reveal for him and it makes it harder for him to open up to Low Down. I wish we could have gotten more of Max but he gets some flushing out with issues about growing up seeing his dad controlled by his strong mother and so he's even more resentful about getting pushed into marriage by Low Down. 

"They're treating me squarely, not for my sake, but for yours, and that's all right. But it's true that I could die right now standing here about to wash up the supper dishes, and no one would weep a single tear. That's how it's always been, and that's a fact!" 

Abruptly Max realized that he had no idea what they were arguing about. Not an inkling. 

Max's mom just about stole the show, if strong capable women do it for you, prepare thy self. She comes up with the plan to try and save face with the rich family, forced into doing something because of a surprise reveal, and the jilted fiancee ends up marrying Max's younger brother. The jilted fiancee ended up playing an over the top villain to me, you'll want to dive in and rescue the younger brother, lol. 

  

Now Sunshine laughed. "You do lots of good things, Aunt Louise! I 'spect you always have." 

"I 'spect so, too," Max said quietly, gazing at her above Sunshine's head. 

Her stomach tightened, and her heart pounded against her rib cage. His expression was unreadable, but he looked at her as if he really saw her, as if his sharp blue eyes penetrated to regions others couldn't see. 

I did literally laugh (a little bit of that lighthearted goofy like a historical Garwood) and cry during this. The story Low Down tells about how she got that nickname and telling Max her real name is Lousie Downe and how he reacts was hit you in the heart, it's vulnerable and subtle in that hurt you so good deep way and then Max getting flustered with Louise's huge nightgown was the laughing feel good relief. 

She had family. 

I do wish the romance side of this was a tad more deeper and played out but Louise's journey to getting a family was hurt so good. This will always be the book of a spoon and a marble making me emotional, so if you're looking for a little western feeling atmosphere and subtly in characters' connection and vulnerabilities, this would be one to go find. *A+ to the later descriptions of Max wearing a duster and Stetson

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Review: Lady or the Tiger

Lady or the Tiger by Heather M. Herrman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

You aren’t going to like me. 

Lady or the Tiger was about a young girl surviving in the American wild west and trying to come into her own. Told, mostly, all from her point-of-view with numerous back and forth time jumps, readers travel with her from the beginning at fifteen years old forced to kill a man to nineteen years old and about to be hung as the Seamstress, a serial killer. This was tagged as young adult but I'd go more new adult, there's nothing completely explicit with the sex and violence but with a first husband who is a sadist in the bedroom, I often felt the messaging of don't give up being yourself for men was stylistically written more for adult thinking; I'm a big Judy Blume fan and I couldn't help comparing the two. The “supporting women's wrongs” with claiming fierce feminism when our lead Alice/Belle lures men with her physical wiles to murder them, just wasn't groundbreaking or entertaining for me, your mileage may vary. 

For a ghost, he looks very much alive. 

Alice gets sent to an asylum after she murders a man and her mother is killed. From there she is forced to marry Reginald, a cop, as a means of escape. She becomes useful to him by helping him cheat while gambling and they travel the west and Europe but he's the sadist in the bedroom and when Alice locks eyes with a boy in Texas, they spend a night together and escape Reginald. Alice then becomes Belle and travels the west and Europe with the carnival of The Damned, falling in love with Cal, the Texas boy, and taming a tiger to dance with. One night things unravel and Belle runs while Cal saves her from a dire situation, but eventually at nineteen Belle turns herself in for the Seamstress murders and wants to be hung because she thinks/knows she's done wrong. Her plan gets ruined when Reginald shows up and says she's crazy, citing the asylum stay, and tries to save her. 

And though I have shot two men, kissing a boy here in the fading light, without last night’s irresistible spell to carry me away or my shadow to guide me, feels like the bravest thing I have ever done. 

Like I said, the timeline is cut and spliced wildly, Alice/Belle starts off ready to be hung, then you'll go from how she escaped Reginald, her murderous time as the Seamstress, time with Cal, how she married Reginald, and the time at the asylum. There's some unreliable narration going on and an ending that takes a page from the short story it's title is inspired by (The Lady or the Tiger). If you can handle non-linear stories, telling you feminism is simply doing what you want, cool real women historical figures shout-outs, a good message (lost in the story for me most the time) of don't change yourself for love or chance at it, and an open-ended ambiguous ending, then this was something different along those lines.

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#TBRChallenge Review: A Cowboy to Remember

A Cowboy to Remember by Rebekah Weatherspoon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

*This is a #TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion. 

“Do you want me to put my hat back on?” 

He was joking, but she didn’t care. “Yes.” 

He chuckled a bit, then grabbed his cowboy hat off the hook near his bedroom door. He slipped it on his head, then climbed in the bed. 

Starting the year off with a late #TBRChallenge, how sooo unlike me. January's theme was New Year, Who Dis?, which I took to mean a new to me author. I've had this author on my tbr for a couple years now and when I was going through my books on my Kindle, well, the cover caught my eye you could say. 

This is an amnesia story, which on paper, I'm burnt out on but there was an interesting angle that drew me in as I got into the story (and no, it wasn't All due to the cowboy hat, lol). We start off with our female main character at an event where we learn Evie is a chef who won some reality tv competitions and is now co-hosting her own show, she's essentially made it. We get some clues that she's a bit tired, over worked, and is actually playing the game to save enough money to open her own restaurant. Things come to a crashing halt when someone she beat out on a competition show, ends up pushing her down a flight a stairs. Evie survives but has amnesia, she can't remember anything about herself. 

With some secondary character bestfriends and inner circle, Evie's emergency contact is called, a Jesse Pleasant, a rancher from Southern California. Readers have a little knowledge that Evie grew-up on this ranch with the Pleasant brothers when her grandmother had to take her when her parents died when she was a kid. Jesse is the oldest, Sam the youngest, and the one who keeps appearing in her spotty dreams, Zach. With povs from mainly Evie and Zach, but also some of the secondary characters, we get a well rounded look at how Evie had a crush on Zach and they fooled around as teenagers only to have a crushing break-up ten years ago and the two haven't talked since. 

With Evie's celebrity but memory loss, everyone thinks it's best to kind of hide Evie until she can recover, there's also some side worrying about how she ended up at the bottom of the stairs. Evie ends up leaving New York and going to stay at the Pleasant's ranch in SoCal. The interesting angle I talked about is how Evie and Zach are still essentially in a fight but Evie has no clue about it, so this leads to a different take on how they're going to work it out. Zach is pretty honest up front and tells her about it, he gives an apology and with Evie's memory loss, she's able to hear it, if not fully internalize it, because she's missing the blocking wall of pain and anger. Their forced proximity at the ranch has them spending time together with Evie physically attracted to Zach and having the lingering residue of emotionally having once been attached to him, some of her dreams work as mini flashbacks to moments they had growing up. 

Zach's family is very cautious about him and Evie being together but Zach see's this as his second chance and Evie is growing to like him, so they get together, with the looming, is Evie going to get her memory back and then be mad all over again. It takes until around the 80% mark for her to eventually remember all but by then, she and Zach have bonded again, so most of the work has been done, with a brief moment of Evie having to work through that past anger but equipped with Zach's apology. Zach does apologize again, when it's more meaningful for Evie and readers get more of how they were early twenties and Evie's grandmother was in Zach's ear about not holding her back career wise. It's all easy and understandable why they disconnected but also why it's now easy for them to fall into this second chance. 

I liked how the amnesia angle worked to deliver a different spin on a second chance forgiveness, I liked all the secondary characters who delivered (Miss Leona novella or supplement or something, give me more about this woman's life!) and have me anticipating their own books, I loved the cowboy hats, I did want more of the ranch but I have a feeling older brother Jesse may deliver that for me, I wanted a little more time spent together and developing Evie and Zach's new romance, I loved all the doggies running around, and I greatly enjoyed the friends and family relationship dynamics.

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#TBRChallenge Review: Simple Jess

Simple Jess by Pamela Morsi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

She'd married well. And she'd done it to save the family another winter mouth to feed. She hadn't liked her husband all that much. But she'd been soft-spoken and loyal to him and had birthed his son. She'd minded her husband as she had her family and would have done whatever he said until the day she died. But he had died. That had changed everything. 

This month's #TBRChallenge was “With a Little Help From My Friends”, the synopsis for this made it sound like the townspeople were going to, helpfully, push Althea into a marriage and while it was a little more forceful trying to push, and not to who the two sides were pushing, Althea did get a push towards considering marriage again, so it counts, I say! 

Althea's mom died when she was a baby and her dad remarried pretty quickly, leaving Althea with her aunt and uncle. This caused Althea to grow up feeling beholden, so when the time came for marriage, she just went along with the first guy, Paisley, who could provide for her. Paisley ends up dying in the first couple years of their marriage, leaving Althea with a three year old, Baby-Paisley, and a coveted farm. Going by her own childhood, she doesn't want to marry again because that spells abandonment and she doesn't ever want Baby-Paisley to feel how she did and she wants to be in control of her life for once. This upsets the two main families on the mountain (this takes place in early 1900s Ozarks) that want to one up each other with control of the farm. One man from each side of the two families is offered up to Althea, Eben and Oather, for her to marry. 

They took him for granted. They all did, Althea realized, including herself. His value to the community continued to be errantly minimized, because Jesse himself was underestimated. He was different. He was like no one else. He was not an equal. Did that make him less? No, Althea thought to herself. Not necessarily. 

While Althea is trying to stand strong on not remarrying, she does understand that she needs some help on the farm and offers a deal to “Simple Jess”, he work for her for a few months and she'll give him her late husband's pack of hunting dogs. Jesse has always wanted dogs of his own and happily takes the deal. I went into Simple Jess honestly thinking Jesse would turn out to have dyslexia or some other specific learning disability that the author could kind of do a little cop-out to, but when Jesse was born, the cord was around his neck, causing his brain to be without oxygen for a while, leaving him with intellectual disability. As this takes place in the early 1900s, there are terms and words used that we consider slurs now, so be very aware of that if choosing to pick this up. 

When I first started this, what captured me immediately, was the heart of the story and characters. This is second in a series, you can tell Jesse's sister and her husband were the main characters from the first, but I had no trouble starting here. Jesse is not always the same as others, he takes longer to think things through and gets overwhelmed easier but what I liked was how the author also showed the values he can bring and how he can understand. As he helps Althea around the farm, readers can tell he has feelings for her, with Althea learning about him and slowly getting building blocks (he kills a deer for her, bonds with Baby-Paisley) to see him a different way. With the characters and situation, it makes sense that their romance doesn't really heat up until the latter half of the book, I'm talking around 85%. 

While I understood and thought it worked/made sense that their romance would take longer to develop, what I wasn't as into was how the middle meandered away from Althea and Jesse. If you're more of a series reader, wanting more of the setting world in your stories than a straight focus on the main couple, then you'd probably enjoy this more. If you ever watched the show The Outsiders, this had some of that hillbilly mountain people feel. There was a secondary couple, Eben and Oather's sister Mavis, that took up a good amount of the second half and you're probably not going to be a fan of Eben and enjoy him getting a HEA (he's a playboy with daddy issues who emotionally and physically hurt/s Mavis). Oather also gets his own spotlight some with the issues that could and do come with being gay in the 1900s Ozarks (there was a little speech from his dad at the end that made my eyes water and became very close to stealing the best emotional moment). 

So, while I thought the beginning was slow building heartfelt good, the middle meandered away with more focus on the setting/world-building characters, a secondary romance that I wished wasn't, and a latter second half that felt pretty rushed. However, this was different in some good ways and I think it still should hold a spot on romance lists, with the caveat of content warning outdated terms. Althea didn't learn to love Jesse in spite of but because of, Jesse's Big Gesture at the end would put a lot of other heroes to shame.

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Review: The Holiday Heartbreaker

The Holiday Heartbreaker by Maisey Yates
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

She’d been Carter’s girlfriend, Carter’s wife, Carter’s ex-wife. Who was she when he didn’t define her? Maybe she deserved to find out. 

The Holiday Heartbreaker is book five in the Four Corners Ranch series but you could start here, like I did. There's obvious characters from past books, the Ranch is shared between four families and the series looks to, mainly, follow a group of brothers that own a portion. They've started a new venture with equine therapy and our heroine, Elizabeth, comes into the picture as the newly hired therapist. 

He had been the favorite child of the devil. He was thirty-four years old and he still hadn’t figured out what the hell to do with that. 

Elizabeth has been divorced for six years because her childhood sweetheart ended up cheating on her, but the story doesn't exactly vilify him as Elizabeth works through the pain of the divorce and acknowledges that they married too young, grew apart, and the ex, kind of, still wants to be a part of their eight year son, Benny's life. It's mostly believable, I'm not sure I'd go as far as Elizabeth delivering a smiling hello to the ex's new wife, the one he cheated on Elizabeth with, to keep the peace but I don't have to be a “perfect” heroine in a romance. There's some friction with the ex as Elizabeth finally decides to do something for herself and take the equine therapist job that requires her to move three hours away, taking Benny with her. Seventy percent of this (not a scientific number) is Elizabeth working through her issues of growing up in the foster care system and how her divorce went down. 

He shifted slightly, and rested his hand on the wall just above her head, leaning in. 

The other thirty percent is divided up between our hero Brody's issues and the insta-lust/love relationship with Elizabeth. Brody's dad was awful and was physically abusive to his brothers, except he treated Brody like he actually loved him. This has caused it's own trauma to Brody as he craved his father's love but doesn't know how to gel that with how abusive (we're talking setting one brother on fire to murder him) the dad was to his brothers. Brody has tried to deal with the trauma by not getting close to anyone and hitting the bars for one night stands for companionship. The first half dealt more with Elizabeth but the second half brings in Brody's issues more. 

She wanted to do something wild. She wanted to do something that made her happy now. She wanted to do something that felt good now. 

Since our two leads are spending so much time with their personal issues, the story spends a lot of time in their heads, not my favorite. If you personally have or had these issues the characters did, I can see this story hitting you harder than me. These two do start hitting the sheets a little bit before the midway point and get more than one open door scene, I can't say I felt the emotional depth between them. So much time is spent in their heads trying to work out their issues, the romance development got mostly left out and it read more like lust attraction. 

Because he had never seen anything more beautiful in all of his life, and he had never wanted anything like he wanted Elizabeth Colfax right now. 

There was a tiny little bit showing Elizabeth's job as an equine therapist but even less of Brody's ranch life and while Christmas happens in the book, there really wasn't much for seasonal vibes. The first half dealt a lot with Elizabeth's issues and I thought I would end up calling this women's fiction but Brody's issues do get showcased enough that I backed off that. However, the romance, relationship development, was pretty lacking, enough that I want to shy away from even recommending this as romance genre. I want to invent a new genre called, therapy fiction because that was what this was mostly focused on, the characters' personal issues. Like I said though, if you share anything with the characters, their emotional working through would probably hit you different and if you have been a reader of the series, you'd probably enjoy seeing one of the last brothers to fall in love. The epilogue was a condensed HEA giving the reader a look at the main couple's future.

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Review: The Cowboy Whisperer

The Cowboy Whisperer by Sabrina Sol
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review 

The ranch had been in their family for four generations. 

The Cowboy Whisperer is second in the Rancho Lindo series, it's about a family run ranch with five brothers who are trying to keep it going in the face of financial troubles. You could start here, the first book introduces everybody, but this does a good job of not overwhelming but relaying the foundation for the family dynamics and setting. There is a continued storyline dealing with the father and his cancer diagnosis and treatment. This book spotlights Tomás, the ranch's stable master and the one everyone is worried about since his fiancee broke off their engagement eight years ago and he hasn't dated since. When his brother Cruz, who's the main one in charge, tells him they're going to have a guest on the ranch for three months, an equestrian jumper training for the Olympics, Tomás is less than thrilled. 

Maybe Rancho Lindo wasn’t up to her standards. But Veronica del Valle was going to find out soon that not everything in this world was about her. 

Veronica's mother was an equestrian jumper and when she died from cancer when Veronica was sixteen, she made a promise that she would compete in the Olympics in her mother's memory someday. Three years ago, Veronica fell during a jump, the physical and mental recovery had her isolating at her family's home in Guadalajara and had rumors spreading about her as the video of her fall went viral. Now, with some pressure from her father, she is ready to try again. Rancho Lindo isn't up to her standards but the stable master is giving her better advice than her trainer. She's also starting to see that she may not always know better and the initial dislike she had with Tomás is turning into something much different.

In that moment, Tomás wasn’t sure exactly what it was. But his gut told him that he was starting to see the real Veronica. And he liked her. 

I thought the beginning of this started off with great possibility but the first half's pace, kept the story slow enough that I started to itch for something to happen. Around thirty percent Veronica and Tomás start to thaw to each other, as they talk and learn about one another. Veronica's not just the rich princess Tomás thought she was and he's not just the rude and grumpy stable master she thought him to be. There's some strain with Veronica and her new trainer, she has over the phone conversations with her sister that she seems to be close too and Tomás has the family drama to deal with, the stress of the ranch needing more money and then his ex-fiancée coming to town to celebrate her parents' anniversary. Tomás says, and it feels like, he's over his ex but when she calls him and tells him she's engaged and bringing the fiancé to the party, he finds himself lying that he has a girlfriend to stop any pity she might have towards him. 

They might be on a pretend date tonight, but Veronica was starting to have real feelings. 

A little over midway, the fake dating kind of happens, I say kind of because while the trope appears in the story, it didn't really feel a big part of it. Veronica sort of steam rolls in and introduces herself as Tomás' girlfriend, even when they had a previous conversation where Tomás said he didn't really feel comfortable lying to his ex and subsequently his parents and abuelita. Tomás then feels he's obligated to help Veronica with her training, even when he turned it down before because he didn't like that she wanted to keep it a secret that he was helping her. They spend a little more time together, go on a date with his ex, her fiancé, and his brother with his girlfriend (book one) and dance, which was just about the only time I felt these two had a romance connection. There's a picnic scene where we get a kiss (this was very closed door) and around eighty percent, Tomás is saying he wants this fake dating relationship to be for real because he loves her. 

Then she remembered that she was Veronica del Valle and she never gave up without a fight. 

I can't really say I bought into or felt the romance between these two and the slower first half and then the latter second half that had a rush of things happening with dealing with issues, Veronica's equestrian career and Tomás' fear of how it could ruin anything between them as it echoes how his ex left and he needs to stay on the ranch, made the story feel so uneven. Tomás' character also felt a little uneven to me, he seemed more stoic grumpy in the first half and then really disappeared in the second half with more of a paper doll getting moved from here to there. The romance wasn't as developed as I like and overall, the story fell off to feeling uninspired. I do really enjoy the setting of a family ranch, so I'm hoping the next brother's romance delivers on some sparks.

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Review: My Heart Will Find You: A Novel

My Heart Will Find You: A Novel by Jude Deveraux
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

For the first time, Etta realized the seriousness of what was happening. 

Etta is in Kansas City when a global pandemic hits and finds herself stranded as people and states shut their doors in fear. Walking through a neighborhood on a way to try another hotel, a kind older gentleman offers her a place to stay, and his son in Denver begs her to be his new caretaker over the phone. Getting a good vibe from the man and out of options, Etta stays. While the current world is at a standstill, Etta goes on an incredible journey. 

Would she dream again? 

My Heart Will Find You was a time travel story that had some Wizard of Oz to it. The beginning introduces us to Etta and how when her mother died, she became the family's new caretaker. At one point Etta, her father, sister, and sister's husband all lived in the same house. As Etta's sister moved out a little while go, Etta is missing being in charge of everything, so it's a time of transition. When Etta ends up at the kind older gentleman's house, Henry, a few more characters are thrown at us as we get a look at Henry's life; the son Ben lives in Denver with his wife, who is going into labor, Freddy, the woman who gives vegetables to her neighbors, Sally the singing neighbor, and a few others. It was a good amount of characters to get to know and when Etta falls asleep only to have an incredibly vivid dream of being a mail order bride in 1871 Kansas, the contemporary characters we just meet, all end up in her dream world, but with different names. 

“Etta,” Henry said slowly, “I've written many books about the Old West, but I've never heard of anyone named Wyatt Earp.” 

Etta shares her dream with Henry and, as a historian who has written many books on the American West, he's intrigued with the actual history and connections he is recognizing from Etta's retelling. After a few nights of sleeping, Etta suddenly finds herself again in the dream world. She gets to know her new husband, Max, the second biggest landowner in Kansas, Max's sister Alice, who is Etta's sister Alicia in her “real” world, and some of the townspeople. Etta begins to think that she is being sent back in time to help the people she recognizes from her real world, recognizing Alicia as Alice, has her knowing that Alice should be matched up with the blacksmith, because he is Alicia's husband in Etta's contemporary world. Etta repeats this match making and it was a lot of the two people being introduced and instantly falling for each other. 

Even in dreams, she took over other people's lives. 

Talking with Henry after a dream, Etta realizes that what she does in the past, can alter the future, she ends up having to make sure Wyatt Earp escapes in the past so that the future will know his name. This has Etta realizing they aren't simply dreams she's having and she begins to think that she has to set everyone's lives right in the past, that she recognizes from her contemporary world. This doesn't leave much room for the romance between Etta and Max to develop, they end up just kind of “I love you” later in the story. Their first under the stars scene (bedroom scene) was a one line and though they get intimate again, those get extended to a paragraph, at most. The emotionally and physically the romance just wasn't there for me in this one. 

“I'm afraid I'll be taken from you.” 

He didn't ask what that meant, but then, he was growing used to the odd things she said. “If you are, then you'll just have to find me. I'll wait for you forever.” 

After setting things to rights the way she thought would make everyone happy and realizing she loved Max, Etta learns that Henry was keeping a secret from her. The ending introduces a new character in the contemporary world and if you've read A Knight in Shining Armor, well, you're in for a similar ending. The concept was interesting with the Wizard of Oz aspect of “and you were there and you were there!”, even though the first half was somewhat of a jumble of names but the romance wasn't there for me. I do hope that someone out there got to escape the first months of Covid by time traveling and finding love, this story was nice fanciful thought to that.

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Review: The Rodeo Queen

The Rodeo Queen by Marcella Bell
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

“I need you to cowboy up.” 

It's the second season of the reality show Closed Circuit and after A.J. and Lil (The Wildest Ride) saved the inner city rodeo program CityBoyz by getting it's accounts back in the black, Diablo Sosa doesn't quite understand why founder Henry “Old Man” Bowman wants him to compete. Henry claims with all the new money, they need more recruits and Diablo competing will give them the attention they need. After Henry was a pseudo father to him and saved him when he was thirteen from going to jail, Diablo will do anything for him. Taking a sabbatical from his job as a lawyer, Diablo is going back to the rodeo, something he hasn't done in fourteen years. 

It was a smile filled with the unspoken promise that, should they ever find themselves in intimate settings, he wouldn't be gentle and that she wouldn't want him to be. 

Sierra Quintanilla is the host of Closed Circuit and in her late twenties, knows what it takes and how to stay at the top as The Rodeo Queen. She must be glam and look beautiful at all times, always act like a lady in public, and never consort with the cowboys. The restrictions at times chafe but her love of horses keeps her in the game. She's never been tempted before but when Diablo comes on the scene, she's suddenly ready to risk and question what she really wants out of life. 

No one had ever called her beautiful when she wasn't trying to be. 

The Rodeo Queen read a lot like the first in the series (you could start here but the first was so good you should go back and read it), the author gives us a complete story with fully fleshed out characters. I love how this author tells a story but I will say the romance isn't always the star of the show for me. Sierra's working out of what she really wants out of life and questioning if she wants to take a chance/risk with Diablo was a lot of her character's story, not so much the actionable falling in love. There's a lot of time spent in the characters heads as they emotionally wrestle with working out decisions. Diablo struggles with past pain of having romantic partners wanting to hide their relationship with him because he's Black and Latine. So, with Sierra being the host of the show he's on and having a sort of morality clause in her contract and Diablo not wanting to feel like a dirty little secret, you can see where the angst springs from. 

Just how far was she willing to push the boundaries of rodeo queen propriety? 

The rodeo competition, mostly, stays in the background (there was one scene that in reversal, had me thinking it went too long), except for a villain plot involving a contestant jealous over not being able to be as good as Diablo and another older contestant, Julio. Diablo's life experience taught him to recognize and prepare for what such attitudes can do and we get a tense scene, that also opens Sierra's eyes to ways Diablo could be feeling, as while Sierra is Cuban herself, her lived experience is different than Diablo's. It's a way that the author gives the characters multiple layers and they feel like fully fleshed out beings. While there were some side characters and A.J., Lil, and Henry from book one make appearances, this was almost all Sierra and Diablo's story. 

She wanted the mess and the risk of going all the way with him or she wanted to leave him alone. 

The story only takes place over a two month period but as we spend a good amount of time in the main character's heads, I felt like I really knew them and on the handful of dates they go on, these two really talked and I could see why they would feel an attraction to one another. It's something that I can struggle with in romance as I feel like things are rushed but while I could read the emotion, the actionable I was talking about felt absent as we were in their heads a lot. Because of Sierra's job, these two had some go and stop moments, stopped by Diablo as he didn't want Sierra to regret anything, before we get our open door (beach) scenes. 

And he wanted her. 

And she wanted him, more than she'd wanted any other person in her life. 

Then ending had Sierra not stepping up when Diablo wanted her to and we get a third act breakup that leads into a personal tragedy for Diablo that has him stepping away from the competition for awhile, giving Sierra time to decide ultimately what she wants out of life. While the personal tragedy was sad for Diablo, the character's relationship with him was too periphery and we don't get to really know the character for me to feel the deep emotional hit and then it's rushed at the end. But, it did give a chance for Diablo's found/chosen family to come together, along with Sierra, to give a sweet heartfelt scene. The characters didn't get out of their heads enough for me to feel the romance was front and center and the ending felt more like the start to a happily ever after, instead of a wrap-up to one. Overall, this was a grounded, slow burn love, great story that had characters with multiple deep layers that will have them lingering in your mind long after you put the book down. 

And because this line has the Garth Brooks' song stuck in my head now, 

Tomorrow would be for bulls and blood and dust and mud [...] 

And they call the thing rodeo(!)

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Review: Too Hot to Handle

Too Hot to Handle by Victoria Dahl
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

3.5 stars 

The last glimmer of evening light caught his face, the shadows making his jaw even harder, and Merry watched him for a dozen heartbeats. More. This was a scene from someone else’s life. A handsome man in a cowboy hat driving a pickup truck through the mountains. His hand on the thigh of his lover. The moonless night hiding their secrets. 

February's #TBRChallenge theme was Getaway, I went with this book because Merry Kade is trying to “getaway” from her “Merry Slacker” reputation and actually stick with a job and succeed at it. This is second in the Jackson Hole series and while I haven't read the first in this series, I have read all the books in the spin-off Jackson Girls' Night out, which featured the brother of the hero of this one, Shane Harcourt. I bring this up because there was a tiny little mystery plot that involved Shane's dad, who disappeared or ran off with his mistress years ago. I remembered the reveal of what happened, which may have tampered some emotional response at the end of this one. 

She’d come here to make a place for herself, and that was what she was going to do. 

Merry is in Jackson Hole because her friend Grace moved there (book 1) and she has accepted a job as a curator to a ghost town. Merry learns that she was basically hired because she was cheap and the funding for the town is actually in probate and her hiring was more of a strategic move in the suing case. Gabriel Bishop died and left 2 million dollars to help fund the ghost town but his grandson heir, that he did leave land to, is suing for the money too. Merry is excited to get things rolling for the ghost town, get it fixed up and ready for tourists. She doesn't let the lack of current funds stop her and she decides to hire her neighbor, well the neighbor of Grace's apartment that she is currently staying in, to fix up the buildings. Shane agrees to help out, even though he's very busy right now with his carpentry. Readers get let in on a secret in the early first half, Shane is actually the grandson and decides to pretend to help Merry so he can try and learn what the board in charge of the money is doing for his court case. 

Merry was a nice girl. And he was a man no one needed to be around. Not for longer than a night. He’d learned that lesson. He knew who he was.

It's probably not hard to figure out where this is all leading, Merry and Shane grow attracted to each other, Merry always being the awkward nerdy girl has some low self-esteem and doesn't think any man could find her hot and Shane grew up with a “runaway” dad, a mom that always was searching for husband, a younger brother who took off as soon as he turned eighteen, and a grandfather who went from woman to woman and was a jerk. Shane doesn't think he's the sticking kind with women but he can't help be attracted to Merry. The guilt of why he started helping Merry eats at him but as they grow closer and then sleep together, he's scared to ruin it and tell her the truth. Dumb of him but how else do we get that angst third act break-up? 

There was something about her. Something sweet and right that had crept inside him over the days he’d known her. 

This read really quick and probably nothing wildly new here, the ghost town aspect was interesting, but the biggest plus was how hot these two were for each other. It's a 2013 publication and these two have sex; in the shower, in the truck, in the bed, thank you Jesus! It's also a Dahl, so there's dollops of deeper emotional plots around, Shane's family issues, Merry's lack of confidence with her sexuality, feeling like her mother is shutting her out, and the working up to finally telling off her a-hole of a cousin. Also, Dahl does humor that I enjoy the hell out, Merry's inner thoughts and quirky awkwardness isn't “I'm so adorably clumsy” or manic pixie, it's more baffle-endearment into looking deeper for Shane. 

“You’re cute when you laugh,” he said, which was true enough, but not the whole story. Her smile made him happy, but he couldn’t say that. Ever. 

I would say this was more of a not get too involved read, the deeper threads were there but like I said, dollops not necessarily depth. For being his bestfriend, Cole (book 1), sure didn't think much of Shane, it seemed anyway when he instantly thought Shane was taking gross advantage of Merry. Friendships were there for both, more so with Merry and Grace but the heat and sex between Merry and Shane was really the star of the show. The last thirty percent had Merry learning about Shane being the grandson and we get our dark moment, then Shane learning a part of the answer about his father, and then Shane proving to Merry that he liked her for her. If you need a quicker, scratching the surface, funny, and hot read, this would do nicely.

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Review: Haunt

Haunt by Christina Maraziotis
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

How she wished she had asked for his name, as no one had ever saved her life before---no one would ever have cared to either. 

H(a)unt is the first book in the Loveletting series that follows a twenty-six year old woman named Charlotte. Born to a sex worker in the late 1800s wild west, Charlotte never knew her father, learned men only want one thing, and had a tough mother. When her mother is murdered, Charlotte decides to take off with her only friend in the world, her horse Finn to the West Rockies. Riding through a town, a man gets thrown out of a saloon and spooks her horse, they lock eyes but the tall man in black with blue eyes rides away. Charlotte later learns from a Wanted poster that it was the infamous Mac Kinnon, wanted for over a decade for numerous murders. A sheriff obsessed with catching Mac, enlists Charlotte to help draw Mac out and from there Charlotte is drawn into danger, adventures, and romances. 

“Ain't no Lord out there, princess.” he finally said, and she froze upon his remark. 

A book of over seven hundred pages, this was written in a lyrical and poetic style that at times made it a little hard to stick with. I liked the beginning of Charlotte starting off in the west alone and then meeting up with a notorious wanted man but the story started to utilize a rinse and repeat formula that started to get exhausting. Charlotte gets saved from a rape by Mac and they both think about how they are drawn to the other but Charlotte then meets another man, Will, who is a rich “elite” and ridiculously talked with some kind of chivalrous knight of old parlance, calling Charlotte “my lady”. The story then gives us a love triangle and Charlotte thinks she is in love with Will but can't get Mac out of her mind, Will loves Charlotte but has some kind of secret, and Mac thinks he isn't good enough for Charlotte. 

She hardly knew him, yet she craved to know more of him. 

While our characters are running, falling in love, Mac saving Charlotte from a grizzly, and generally be-bopping around, there would sometimes be flashbacks and inside a character's head passages. The flashbacks were to tell Mac's backstory, he was an orphan who was adopted by a mentally, physically, and sexually abusive farmer who claimed to be a man of God. They worked to show how and why Mac has become the man he is today. The passages that came from inside a character's head, didn't work as well for me, there was some working out who it was supposed to be in the beginning. The passages would follow a man committing murders from almost a trance or outside himself. The “serial killer” aspect didn't really work for me and that was the only part of the story I felt could come even close to giving this a “horror” tag. 

One was a cold-blooded murderer that pretended to care about her, or rather took pride in rescuing helpless women in all his heroic ways, then disappearing like a phantom into thin air; and the other---a one-of-a-kind gentleman that any woman would give anything for, yet, carrying a deep secret within him. 

Charlotte is mostly who we follow but there were numerous povs from other characters to give a wide look at the world. Later in the book, Will's secret becomes known and he has to leave Charlotte to deal with it. Charlotte then meets a bounty hunter on Mac's trail named Levi and our love triangle becomes a square. Will has his own adventure and we then go back and forth showing Charlotte with Levi and Mac. It eventually all comes to ahead with Mac, Charlotte, the obsessed sheriff, and Levi. As this is book one in a series, the ending is not final and Charlotte has more adventures ahead of her. 

“There lies kindness within your hear, Mac Kinnon. Ya just don't know it yet.” 

I wouldn't read this for the horror and while there is romance in it, it wouldn't be considered romance genre as the ending doesn't give an HEA or HFN. I lost a lot steam to keep reading the story around page three hundred, was briefly awakened when out of nowhere, inbred hillbillies made an appearance, and then tired of the rinse and repeat of Charlotte feeling drawn to Mac but getting entranced with kisses with first Will and then Levi; the story felt like a drawn out trip to see if Charlotte could hang on to her virginity and/or who she would “give” it to. SPOILER Charlotte gets rapped by Levi towards the end.END SPOILER There was some interesting story here but the overly descriptive, lyrical prose cloyed it up, Will's character honestly felt like a waste of time, too many character's “soughing” too many times, emotions/characters felt overly immature, and the ending felt more disappointing than emotional SPOILER Mac dies END SPOILER and didn't really leave me itching to continue Charlotte's story.

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Review: The Ranger

The Ranger by Holly Harte
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

1.5 stars 

*This is a TBRChallenge review, there will be spoilers, I don't spoil everything but enough, because I treat these reviews as a bookclub discussion. 

“My name is Delana Wyatt, and I have a proposition for you." 

The start of the year's #TBRChallenge theme was Starting Over, so I chose a story that has been on my tbr since 2006 and had a synopsis saying the heroine is trying to leave town until she turns twenty-one and can get her inheritance and not be forced into marriage by her step-father. She has to leave her wealthy but miserable life with a controlling step-father and, wait for it, start over. Delana chooses a cowboy she's never seen before, thinking he won't be in cahoots with her powerful connected step-father and asks him to take her out of town. 

He stared at her for a few more seconds, then exhaled heavily. “Yeah, I'll get you out of town, but you have to do something for me in return.” 

It's Austin, TX 1886 but thankfully not an HP, so Texas Ranger Blu Cahill has a more innocent request, if Delana leaves town with him, she has to pose as his, platonic, wife. Blu is about to go undercover to try and get evidence on a wire-cutting gang in Brown County. The whole wire-cutting angle was pretty interesting as I had to go read about when the law was introduced and how the pro-free range vs the wire war began and went on. A little less interesting in this as Blu had it pretty easy with his investigation. 

So our merry gang of two set off and already Blu thinks Delana is a mighty pretty filly but Blu's dad was an abusive alcoholic after Blu's mom died when he was five, it caused Blu to leave home at fourteen and make The Vow. You romance readers know what I'm talking about, he's never going to marry or have children because he's scared his father's blood runs in his veins and he will also beat his kids. Only saloon gals for our Blu, sorry Delana. But Delana has also made A Vow, but the heroine's version, she's never going to marry because she doesn't want to lose her independence. As they travel the five or six days to get to Brownwood in Brown County, their hormones start to hormone. 

Delana stared, unable to tear her gaze away from the spellbinding sight across the yard. A half-naked Blu. She hadn't meant to watch him, but as she finished sweeping the floor, she had passed one of the windows and caught a glimpse of him chopping wood. 

I told you all last year, get to chopping wood! Works every time. At this point, Delana knows Blu is undercover but not he's a Texas Ranger or that he's looking to bust up a wire cutting gang. In Brownwood, they meet the boarding house owner who Delana likes and considers a very wise and experienced woman because she's the old, old age of thirty-five and the sheriff who instantly wants to know Blu's thoughts on putting wire (I'm talking fencing here, in case there was confusion) up. There's only one bed! at the boarding house but Blu had already purchased a ranch in anticipation of coming to Brownwood and they don't stay long at the boarding house. I had some questions about an undercover assignment that Blu thinks will last three months at probably the most and he's buying a ranch, later, putting up a barn, and then thinking corrals. I was like, “How much does Rangering pay??” but then towards the end there was a brief line about him having credit from the Rangers and I was like, “Oh, makes sense.” Just kidding, I was like “How much of a budget do the Rangers have??” 

At this point, it's 30%, yeah, the story dragged but the hormones have been hormoning in the background all along and we get passions flaring and Delana starting to become the aggressor, woman wants it. But Blu knows that finger-banging in the kitchen leads to marriage and he still thinks he will instantly turn into his father if he has kids. He tries to shut down the touchy but, again, woman wants it. 

  

She'd fallen in love with Blu Cahill. 

At 50% Delana has decided she that she loves Blu and the amazing wire-cutting gang just kind of go up to Blu and throw out hidden meaning questions like, “You putting wire up?” “You want to join our gang and go out and cut wire?”, they are real crafty about not getting caught. Blu has a friend (former Ranger) drive some cattle up to his, what is looking like a few weeks, undercover ranch and the friend has a completely off page secondary romance with the wise “old” boarding house owner. Oh, and Delana gets it and Blu has this lovely speech after they wake up in the morning: “We had a deal when we left Austin, and I intend to keep my end. I'll protect you as long as we're here, and when my work is done, I'll take you wherever you want to go. Then I'm out of your life for good. If you're in a family way before we leave here, or find out later, I want nothing to do with the child.” He paused to let his words sink in, then added, “Are we clear about that?" Dripping with charm this one. 

He cupped her delicate jaw with his palm, then brushed his thumb across her full mouth. Lowering his face toward hers, he whispered, “I reckon I'll regret this one day." 

At 65% Blu admits to himself he is in love with Delana but still fears the morphing into dad and works himself to the bone during the day for the undercover ranch so he's too exhausted to have sex with her at night. But Delana touches his chest when he gets into bed and well, how can a mere mortal stand against such power. 70% Blu comes home in steer blood (the wire-cutters also kill cattle) and he spills the beans on being a Ranger and going after the wire-cutting gang to Delana. Delana decides that she must help him and I was like, oh no, TSTL is about to happen. But Blu volunteered to take stolen horses (the wire-cutter also steal horses) to a few towns over to sell but he's really getting the evidence he's collected to his Ranger boss (I forget his name, lol). On the way he happens upon an old Ranger friend, he quit the Rangers because of some mysterious reason, the dude is obviously being set-up for a second book in series, and the Ranger friend says he looks tired and he'll take the info to boss. Blu agrees but then decides to go back to Brown County early because he misses Delana so much. The reunite, they have sex, fight as Delana says she's probably pregnant, and Delana's must help consisted of talking to the wives and girlfriends and she learns some details about the sheriff's location that Blu needs as he suspects the sheriff is the leader of the gang. 

The ending has a Rangers vs wire-cutters shoot-out and my feared TSTL, where out of nowhere, Delana rides into a confrontation between Blu and the sheriff. At 97% Blu says he'll marry Delana and the only thing about this story I really liked was how horny Delana became and stayed, she responds with: “Hmm. Well, if it isn't my money you're after,” she gave him a wide-eyed, innocent look, “why do you want to marry me?" 

“Because, darlin', I'm head over heels in love with you." 

“That's a pretty bold statement,” she said, then ran her tongue over his lower lip. “One that I think requires some proof." 

He shivered. “Yeah? Got something in mind?" 

"Uh-huh. How about going someplace private so you can prove exactly how much you love me?"

Another chuckle rumbling in his chest, he hauled her closer against him. Just before his lips captured hers, he whispered, “There ya go." Woman wanted it and woman got it, respect.

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Review: Second Chance at Rancho Lindo

Second Chance at Rancho Lindo by Sabrina Sol
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review. 

He'd been consumed with the idea that there was something better for him out in the world. When all he really had wanted was something different. 

When an IED puts an end to his career as an explosions technician because of lingering hand grip issues, Gabe Ortega goes back home to the family ranch that he couldn't wait to escape. His four brothers still work on Rancho Lindo and with a father that Gabe just can't seem to connect with, he's felt like an outsider. At a transitional point in his life, Gabe gets reintroduced to the ranch's horticulturist, Nora Torres and while he's instantly attracted to her, he has some past issues to atone for with Nora and his family, along with deciding what he wants out of life once and for all. 

He decided right then and there that his new favorite pastime was making Nora blush. 

Second Chance at Rancho Lindo kicks off the series about the Ortega family, they've owned Rancho Lindo for generations. Second oldest brother Gabe, always felt like he couldn't live up to his father's expectations of him and be good enough like his older brother Cruz. When Gabe turned eighteen, the tension finally exploded and he signed up for the military to just get away. Coming from a close knit family, this fractured some relationships and because Gabe left forgetting that he promised to take Nora, a girl who spent her summers on the ranch with her tia and tio, to a dance, he also broke trust with her. This was really a family ensemble story, the Ortega brothers along with their parents and abuelita were a big part of the story and I would suggest reading this for that kind of atmosphere because this was a good story in that aspect. For me, the romance took a big backseat and there wasn't much there. 

All she knew was that her pulse quickened at the way he looked at her. 

By 20% Gabe learns why Nora is standoffish with him and I liked how that issue when they were teenagers wasn't the number one issue of keeping them apart throughout the story. It played, along with Nora's father leaving when she was nine, into Nora's trust issues with Gabe but Nora didn't fixate so much on it. Around 30% I felt like Nora and Gabe were starting to get going more and I was ready for the romance to make a stronger showing since the setting and family dynamics had been laid out but these two never really got their engines revving and out of park. 

It was about time he truly appreciated what he had in front of him. 

And that included Nora. 

The majority of the story is Gabe figuring out what he really wants out of life now that his military career is over. He half halfheartedly checks around for jobs from his contacts but it's mostly him being wishy washy and not quite outright moping around that he feels like he could never live up to his father's expectations and therefore not wanting to try. An emotion and thread I think could have played better if around 20% had been trimmed from this, the story started to feel like it was dragging as this went on for the whole story. Halfway through we get Gabe learning about how the ranch is in financial trouble, health issues with his dad, and he and Nora kiss. It was around 60% that Nora and Gabe start up their relationship and while we get a few kisses here and there (one very fade-to-black scene) most of their romance is very much in the back and just about non-existent. 

Nora did the only thing she could do in that very big moment between them. 

She kissed him back. 

The ending had Gabe coming through for the ranch and Nora in the work sense and a misunderstanding that had everyone leaning into their insecurities and with only 5% remaining, Gabe finally making a decision that he grappled with for the whole story. I struggled with how to rate this because I liked the story but if you read it in the family fiction sense, I would have wanted more conversations, scenes, and flushing out with some characters. I would promote it as family fiction over romance though, the romance was more of pinch seasoning and too much in the background for me. A good story, setting, and family but the romance was not there for me.

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