Review: The Cowboy Meets His Match

The Cowboy Meets His Match by Jessica Clare
My rating: 2 of 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. 

Fourth in the Wyoming Cowboys series, I would suggest reading the book before this one to gain some background knowledge about the heroine Becca. She's lived in the small town of Painted Barrel all her life and after her highschool sweetheart calls off their wedding, only two days before, she's only ready to start dating again two years later. Hank is a new character to the town as he and his two brothers have come down from Alaska to help their uncle on his farm for a year. He's got a four year old daughter, Libby, and a serious case of the tall, dark, and gruff. 

He didn’t know what to think of her. He couldn’t stop thinking of her. 

Becca and Hank meet when he brings Libby into her hair salon to have help removing gum from Libby's hair. He barely condescends to speak to Becca, the reasoning is he's shy and doesn't having much experience with women besides being burned by Libby's mom. I thought he came off rude more than anything and while Becca just got done thinking that it was time to move on and start dating, I can't believe she still trudged ahead and asked, not outright rude but close, Hank. He refuses her but then Libby ends up taking groceries to their ranch and that parlays to her going up their every morning to cook, clean, and watch Libby. 

And his chest gave this funny little squeeze, because in that moment, Hank knew he was completely and utterly out of his depth. 

Becca is almost thirty and there's a lot of “getting too old to have kids” and spinsterish talk, with just an overall 1950's vibe throughout the story that was offputting to me. Becca wants a family badly and feels like time is running out and is mad at her ex-fiancee for “taking the best years of her life”. Hank has lived in the Alaskan wilderness all his life and when he finally spends some time in a town in Alaska, he meets a woman who takes advantage of him, uses him for his money, and then dumps Libby on him out of the blue. He doesn't trust women and doesn't understand why Becca would ask him out or want to be around him. As he spends more time in Painted Barrel though, he begins to think that Libby needs a mother, ranching leaves him no time to take of her and people are starting to tell him she needs friends her own age. So, we have Becca who is in a hurry to start a family and Hank who wants a mom for his daughter; I wasn't really feeling the unique to them romance or chemistry between these two. 

He wanted her smiles, her laughs, he wanted to drink in the way she casually tossed her hair over her shoulder as she bent to work. He wanted more than casual. 

By the half-way point, Becca and Hank are dating and together but with Hank still thinking he might leave for Alaska when the year is out, there's some hanging angst. There's some scenes with Hank's two brothers, setting up the next books in the series, a new friend of Becca, and looks at past characters. Maybe because this is book 4, the author went lighter on descriptions of the town and citizens, but I missed more of a feel for the town and people that I usually like in small town romances. The second half felt stretched out and wishy-washy with Hank maybe, maybe not moving to Alaska. 

This was everything he’d ever wanted … and he couldn’t picture anyone else he’d rather share it with. 

While Hank made heart shaped pancakes once and does end up gifting Becca a puppy, I still found his character pretty unlikable, he opens Becca's car door but had some side-eye possessive tendencies and was growly, gruff, borderline rude (instead of my personal favorite growly, gruff, softy on the inside) for the majority of the story. If you're a reader of the series, you'll probably enjoy reading Becca finally get her happily ever after but if new, I wouldn't start here. 

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