Series: Copper Ridge

Review: Christmastime Cowboy by Maisey Yates + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Christmastime Cowboy by Maisey Yates + GiveawayChristmastime Cowboy (Copper Ridge, #10) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Copper Ridge #10
Pages: 384
Published by Harlequin Books on October 24th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

It's Christmas in Copper Ridge, and love is waiting to be unwrapped…

Falling for a bad boy once is forgivable. Twice would just be foolish. When Sabrina Leighton first offered her teenage innocence to gorgeous, tattooed Liam Donnelly, he humiliated her, then left town. The hurt still lingers. But so does that crazy spark. And if they have to work together to set up her family winery's new tasting room by Christmas, why not work him out of her system with a sizzling affair?

Thirteen years ago, Liam's boss at the winery offered him a bribe—leave his teenage daughter alone and get a full ride at college. Convinced he wasn't good enough for Sabrina, Liam took it. Now he's back, as wealthy as sin and with a heart as cold as the Oregon snow. Or so he keeps telling himself. Because the girl he vowed to stay away from has become the only woman he needs, and this Christmas could be just the beginning of a lifetime together…

My Review:

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, particularly in Copper Ridge, Oregon.

Falling for a bad boy once is not merely forgivable, but probably a rite of passage to adulthood. We all do it at least once, and usually learn that the wild ride isn’t worth the inevitable fall. Falling for one twice is a pattern. Falling for the same bad boy twice is usually well beyond foolish.

But not for Sabrina Leighton. In this second-chance-at-love romance, there are a whole ton of, let’s call them mitigating circumstances.

The first time she fell for Liam Donnelly, she was all of 17 and he was 20. There was a certain amount of young and stupid involved on both of their parts. And the fact is that while the emotions may have been very, very real, nothing actually happened outside of those emotions.

Thirteen years ago, the one real thing that they had was friendship – a friendship that Liam broke, along with Sabrina’s heart, when he left. Not without a word, but with a whole lot of words that have continued to haunt Sabrina all these years.

And most of those words weren’t even true. But the scars they left still hurt.

Now that Liam is back in Copper Ridge, as part of the Donnelly brothers return to town in the wake of their grandfather’s death (see Slow Burn Cowboy, Down Home Cowboy and Wild Ride Cowboy for the full story) Liam and Sabrina keep running into each other, whether Sabrina wants to or not. (You don’t have to read the entire Copper Ridge series for the Donnellys’ piece of it to make sense, but it probably helps to read this quartet)

Copper Ridge is a very small town.

That Sabrina and Liam have unfinished business is pretty obvious to pretty much everyone, even if not everyone knows all the gory details. So whether Sabrina’s boss (and ex-sister-in-law) Lindy sets Sabrina up to deal with her unfinished business, or whether that’s just a happy side-effect, Sabrina is stuck. It’s part of her job to work with Liam on setting up a tasting room in town that will feature wines from her winery and cheeses from his ranch – as well as trap a whole bunch of tourist dollars and funnel customers back to both their businesses.

It’s a great business idea – even though at least initially it feels like a really lousy personal one.

But the chemistry that Liam denied all those years ago, and that Sabrina wasn’t quite mature enough to understand, hasn’t abated one little bit in the intervening years. The only way that they can manage to work together is not to get past what happened in the past, but to go through it.

To hash out all the stored resentments, explore all that bottled chemistry, and attempt to get each other out of their systems.

Like that’s ever going to happen.

Escape Rating B: Christmastime Cowboy feels like the cherry on top of the Donnelly Brothers subseries of the Copper Ridge ice cream sundae.

Also a real “cherry”, as Sabrina has never managed to find a man who even gets close to turning her crank after Liam ran off all those years ago.

I love the way that this author does angsty heroines, but Sabrina’s angst didn’t quite have the deep, tolling bell ring of angst of the heroines of Down Home Cowboy and Wild Ride Cowboy. Not that Sabrina hasn’t been hurt, but her wounds seem a bit more self-inflicted that either Alison’s or Clara’s.

While the story loses a bit of depth in comparison with the others because of that, one of the good parts of Christmastime Cowboy is the way that Sabrina finally manages to figure that out for herself, with only a couple of glancing blows from the clue-by-four administered by Liam.

Not that he doesn’t have plenty of his own baggage to deal with. But his baggage was dropped on him by his dysfunctional parents. Not that he hasn’t added plenty of extra pieces along the way all by himself. But he needs multiple hits from that clue-by-four, not just administered by Sabrina, but also by his brother Alex, before he finally figures out what’s been staring him in the face all along.

So the story, as it has often been in this series, is one where the hero is just certain that he hasn’t got a heart, or if it’s still in there it’s three sizes too small and that he’s just not worthy of giving it to anyone else. Ever.

The heroine, on that other hand, figures out how to dump enough of her own baggage to start a real life for herself, one that she’d much prefer to have with the hero, but that she knows she can manage to make on her own once her stomped on heart finally heals.

As formulas go, this one is always a winner.

Christmastime Cowboy is the final book in the Copper Ridge series. But the romance is just moving a bit down the road to neighboring Gold Valley in Smooth-Talking Cowboy. No one needs to smooth-talk this reader to jump back to this author’s next series. All of this author’s next series!

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

I am giving away a copy of Christmastime Cowboy to one lucky US/CAN commenter:

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Review: Wild Ride Cowboy by Maisey Yates + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> book reviews
Review: Wild Ride Cowboy by Maisey Yates + GiveawayWild Ride Cowboy (Copper Ridge, #9) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Copper Ridge #9
Pages: 384
Published by Harlequin Books on August 29th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

He's come back to Copper Ridge, Oregon, to keep a promise—even if it means losing his heart…

Putting down roots in Copper Ridge was never Alex Donnelly's intention. But if there's one thing the ex-military man knows, it's that life rarely unfolds as expected. If it did, his best friend and brother-in-arms would still be alive. And Alex wouldn't have inherited a ranch or responsibility for his late comrade's sister—a woman who, despite her inexperience, can bring tough-as-iron Alex to his knees.

Clara Campbell didn't ask for a hero to ride in and fix her ranch and her life. All she wants is the one thing stubborn, honorable Alex is reluctant to give: a chance to explore their intense chemistry. But Clara has a few lessons to teach him, too…about trusting his heart and his instincts, and letting love take him on the wildest adventure of all.

My Review:

It’s a wild but very satisfying ride to the angst factory in the latest book in Maisey Yates’ Copper Ridge series.

And there’s no one whose very angsty heroines I like better than the women in this series. The best books in this series, at least for this reader, have been Last Chance Rebel, Down Home Cowboy, and the latest, Wild Ride Cowboy, and they all feature heroines who have more than the average amount of really awful baggage to carry.

There’s just something about the way that this author creates heroines that have really, truly suffered, but still get up and keep on going, that just works for me. What I love is that the angst and heartbreak that these women suffer is not llama drama fodder, nor has some man done them wrong. It’s that life has hit them upside the head by stuff way beyond their control, and that while they may be temporarily down, they are never out.

And that the entry of a good man, or a bad man trying to be good, into their lives does not magically solve all their problems – because their problems, like Clara’s in this particular story, are not ones that can really be solved. Only survived.

Not that Alex Donnelly’s belated re-introduction into Clara’s life doesn’t make things a bit easier for her, because it does. But the real story is the way that Alex’ insertion into Clara’s life and Clara’s ranch gives her the space she needs to get a grip on her own stuff. And that Clara’s advent into Alex’s life gives him the equal opportunity to finally deal with the heavy baggage that he’s been toting around his own life.

These are two people to whom a lot of shit has just plain happened, and neither of them have done the best job of shoveling it out of the way. In their own ways, they’ve spent more time wallowing in it than mucking it out.

Considering that Clara ends up with bison on her ranch, there’s going to be plenty of real manure to step around, without trucking in it from both of their pasts.

Clara has basically had a hard-knock life. She was 12 when her mother died, 16 when her dad went the same way. Now she’s 21, and her brother, her only remaining family, has been killed in action. Clara is all alone with her ranch and her grief, and not much else. There’s been too much death and not enough life in her life, and the accumulated mourning has finally beaten her to her knees. She may look like she’s coping on the outside, but she’s sunk in the morass and just can’t see her way out.

The ranch is all she has, but every corner of it is filled with memories of someone she lost. On her own, it’s going to take her a long time to come out of the dark, but there’s never a sense that she won’t get there one way or another. The problem is that in her grief she’s ignoring a whole lot of things that won’t let themselves be ignored for very long – like the bills she has to pay and the lawyers she needs to see. And it’s not even that she can’t pay the bills, it’s that she’s unwilling to open the envelopes and deal with the finality of her brother’s death.

Alex Donnelly has been ignoring his grief and his responsibilities for far too long. Clara’s brother was Alex’s best friend, and the man is dead because he stepped in front of a hail of bullets that was intended to kill them both. Now Alex is left to mourn, and to take care of the obligation that his friend left him with.

Alex is the executor of his friend’s estate, and the will has made him the “caretaker” of both the ranch and Clara for one year or until the ranch is self-supporting. Alex is in charge of the one thing that Clara believed was all her own. After all, she’s the only person who has been around to take care of it. And even though keeping the ranch has taken up her entire life, it is all she has.

But Alex has put off helping Clara so that he can get as settled in as he ever does at the Laughing Irish ranch that he has inherited along with his three brothers. The opening of that story is a big part of Slow Burn Cowboy. Now that Alex is as settled in as he ever gets, it’s time for him to take care of Clara.

So that he can move on again. Because that’s what he always does. He moves on before someone asks him to leave. Because they always do.

When Alex finds himself making a home with Clara, and wanting to make a real life with her, he doesn’t want to leave. But he knows it can’t last.

Or can it?

Escape Rating B+: Like the heroine in the marvelous Last Chance Rebel, Clara is a woman who has much too much real crap to deal with. She’s only 21, and everyone she’s ever loved has died. When we meet her she is still in the depths of her grief for her brother. She’s not despairing, she’s just beyond numb. It makes the earliest part of the book a hard read, because Clara is in such a dark place.

Alex becomes her light in the tunnel. But there’s an old joke about when you see a light in the tunnel, there’s a good chance that it’s an oncoming train. And that’s what Alex thinks of himself. His foundational experience is that he isn’t good enough for anyone to stay with, including, or perhaps especially, his own parents.

He’s certain that he’s not good enough for Clara, that he’s not worthy of her love or her trust. And he spends a whole lot of time being insulting about Clara’s age and agency, pretending that at 21 she’s not old enough to know her own mind and heart, and that at 31 he’s too old and too damaged for her.

Mostly, he’s just protecting himself. And Clara, rightfully, calls him on his bullshit. Because Alex is both stubborn and scared, there’s plenty of b.s. and she has to call him on it multiple times. It’s easy to wonder if he’s ever going to get the message, or whether she’s going to have to beat it into him with a clue-by-four.

The delivery of said clue-by-four in the hands of Alex’s equally dysfunctional brother Liam, makes for a satisfying ending to Wild Ride Cowboy, and sets things up nicely for Liam’s own story in Christmastime Cowboy. It looks like presents for everyone!

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Harlequin is offering one (1) lucky winner a $25 Amazon Gift Card! To enter, simply fill out the Rafflecopter below:

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Review: Down Home Cowboy by Maisey Yates + End of Summer Tour + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | B+ Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways> Guest Posts
Review: Down Home Cowboy by Maisey Yates + End of Summer Tour + GiveawayDown Home Cowboy (Copper Ridge, #8) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Copper Ridge #8
Pages: 384
Published by Harlequin Books on June 27th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

This Texas cowboy has come home to Copper Ridge to put down roots…but will he risk his heart again?
Asked where he'd be at this point in life, Cain Donnelly would have said anywhere but Copper Ridge, Oregon, living with his estranged brothers. But since his wife abandoned them, both he and his daughter, Violet, are in need of a fresh start, so he's back to claim his share of the family ranch. Local baker Alison Davis is a delicious temptation, but she's also his daughter's mentor and new boss. That makes her off-limits…until she offers a no-strings deal that no red-blooded cowboy could resist.
Alison has worked tirelessly to rebuild her life, and she won't jeopardize her hard-won independence. Especially if it also complicates Cain's relationship with Violet. But with Cain offering a love she never thought was possible, Alison has to find the courage to let her past go…or watch her future ride away for good.

My Review:

Maisey Yates’ Copper Ridge series has been a bit of a mixed bag for me. I adored Last Chance Rebel, but let’s just say that I did not feel much love for Slow Burn Cowboy. On my other hand, my Guest Reviewer Amy clearly enjoyed Hold Me, Cowboy. So we were two out of three coming into Down Home Cowboy.

And we have another winner.

Neither Cain Donnelly nor Alison Davis are looking for a relationship. But they are both looking for sex. Four years is a long dry spell for anyone in their early-to-middle 30s, even coming out of their completely different but equally bad relationships.

Maybe not quite equally bad. Alison was abused by her ex-husband for eight years, and her four years post-divorce have been a journey of self-discovery and self-fulfillment. But her baggage is huge and painful, and she’s just reached the point where she is willing to dip her toe back into the waters of sex. But she is unwilling to cede an inch of her hard-won independence to any man for any reason. And it’s impossible to blame her.

Cain’s ex-wife left him four years ago, running off and leaving him with sole custody of their daughter Violet. Dealing with the fallout from that disaster, along with being a single father, has left Cain with little time, energy or inclination to get involved with anyone, until he meets Alison.

But they definitely start out on the same page. They both want sex, but neither of them is interested in the complication of a relationship. Things are already complicated enough – Alison is Violet’s boss at her bakery, and it seems like working for Alison is the first thing that Violet has even half enjoyed since Cain uprooted them from Texas and moved in with his half-brothers in the ranch they all inherited from their grandfather.

(The details of that particular SNAFU are in Slow Burn Cowboy. And while the romance in that book was a bit of a disappointment, the messy drama of the Donnelly boys making themselves into a functionally dysfunctional family was a load of fun. I’m happy to see more of them! Possibly not quite as happy as Alison is to see ALL of Cain, but that’s part of what makes Down Home Cowboy work.)

The problem that Cain and Alison have is that it is difficult to make love without feeling at least a little love (Which was also one of Finn’s issues in Slow Burn Cowboy. This may be a trend.) And no matter what fibs they told themselves about what they were expecting from their liaison, it’s pretty clear from the beginning that they are, quite definitely, making love and not just getting their ashes hauled. Not that they aren’t doing that, quite well, too.

But when Cain challenges Alison to admit that they both feel more for each other than they planned on, Alison lets her past fears ruin her present hopes. Unless she can finally drop the baggage that’s weighing her down for good.

Escape Rating B+: This one was fun. And it was way, way, way more fun than Slow Burn Cowboy, without quite rising to the level of angsty goodness that was Last Chance Rebel.

This is a story where everyone has baggage, and everyone needs to drop it. Or learn to carry it. Or both. And it’s a story where everyone is afraid, and with good reason.
Both Violet and Cain fear abandonment. His father abandoned him, his mother was an alcoholic, and her mother abandoned both her and Cain. Those fears are all real. Alison is afraid of losing herself again, the way she did in her abusive marriage. She’s not certain her new found strength and independence is strong enough to let her love someone without letting them take her over, even though she knows that her ex’s need to take her over and grind her down had way more to do with him than with her. That she let it happen haunts her to the point of preventing her from moving all the way forward, and we understand why.

Watching them all overcome the worst of what’s holding them back and learning to cope with the rest in a healthy and not destructive fashion is what makes this story work. At least, that’s what made the story work for this reader, and I hope for lots of others.

If this review, or any of the reviews, guest posts and spotlights in this End of Summer Blog Tour tickle your reading fancy, you can download a sampler of all the opening chapters from Harlequin.

The End of Summer – Guest Post by Maisey Yates

I love Summer. When it’s not burning hot (which is when I end up hiding in the AC) it takes me right back to being a kid. Our schedule is relaxed, the days are long, the evenings cool and blue, and the mornings…perfect for laying in bed just a little bit longer.

But days like that can all blur together, and then Summer can end up flying by before you know it.

I find that changes in scenery help a little bit with that. We live in Oregon, and it’s an amazing state with totally diverse landscapes that make for some amazing road trips. Or even just glorious back yard hangouts.

We’ve spent our share of time out on the lake paddle boarding this year, and hiking on the trails behind the historic town we live close to, making the most of what we have nearby.

In early July, we took our kids way up in the mountains and lay in the back of the pickup truck and looked at the stars. It makes a huge difference when you can escape the light pollution. We could see the Milky Way and (for the most part) the kids even got along.

Then we went on a big road trip to the eastern part of the state, where we got to enjoy the high desert.

We’re used to a lot of green in the state. I’ve lived in Oregon all my life, and I don’t think I had an adequate appreciation for just how unique the Eastern part of the state is. The red mountains and volcanic rock are a pretty sharp contrast to the evergreen mountains that surround our house.

From there we continued up to Portland, Oregon, which is our major city. (You might know it from the TV show Portlandia. I can’t dispute the accuracy of that show. At all.)

We got to enjoy the museum of science, and Oregon Zoo and some other more urban things that we don’t get a chance to take in very often seeing as we live very, very not urban.

So far this summer we haven’t had the chance to make it over to the coast, which is my other favorite Oregon locale. My husband and I honeymooned in Bandon, Oregon twelve years ago, and it has a special place in my heart. Which, if you’ve read my books your can probably tell, since Bandon served as major inspiration for my Copper Ridge series!

Getting out and enjoying Oregon is one of my favorite summer pastimes. And staying in writing love letters to Oregon in my Copper Ridge books is my favorite thing to do all year long.

I love to write books set everywhere, and I love to travel all over, but Oregon is my home, and that’s where my heart is — when it comes to life and fiction.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

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Review: Slow Burn Cowboy by Maisey Yates + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | blog tours> book reviews> C+ Reviews> Giveaways
Review: Slow Burn Cowboy by Maisey Yates + GiveawaySlow Burn Cowboy (Copper Ridge, #7) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Copper Ridge #7
Pages: 384
Published by Harlequin Books on April 18th 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

In Copper Ridge, Oregon, a cowboy's best friend might turn out to be the woman of his dreams…
If Finn Donnelly makes a plan, he sticks to it. After his brothers left Copper Ridge, Finn stayed behind, determined to keep their ranch going by himself. And when he realized his feelings for Lane Jensen were more than platonic, he shoved that inconvenient desire away. It was easy…until it wasn't. Suddenly his brothers are coming home to claim their share of the property. And Lane is no longer just in his fantasies. She's in his arms, and their friendship is on the line…
He's been her buddy, her handyman, her rock. But until that one breathtaking kiss, Lane somehow overlooked the most important thing about Finn Donnelly—he's all man. They're right together, no matter how much his volatile past has bruised him. Finn wants to hold Lane's body, but he doesn't want to hold her heart. But Lane is falling fast and now she's got a plan of her own…to show Finn there's nothing hotter than friendship turned to slow-burning love.

My Review:

I loved Last Chance Rebel, and my friend Amy loved Hold Me Cowboy, so I expected to love Slow Burn Cowboy. But that’s not what happened.

Instead I have very much of a mixed feelings review on tap. Very mixed.

The friends-to-lovers trope is one of my favorites, so again, I was expecting to like the story line in this book. But something, actually multiple somethings, don’t quite work.

The set up is excellent, Lane and Finn have been best friends for ten years, ever since Lane left her parents’ home back East and moved to Copper Ridge to live with her brother Matt. At the time, Lane was sixteen and obviously just a bit fragile. Finn was 23 or 24 and more than a bit too old for her.

But that 8 or 9 year gap closes pretty quickly after a few years. Now Lane is in her late 20s and Finn is in his mid-30s. They’re both adults. But they are both still awfully fragile.

They are best friends. Really, truly. They spend time together and they care for each other and they need each other. But they are filling the gaps in each other’s lives that would normally be filled by a spouse or significant other. Not that their relationship isn’t significant, but they have fallen into a situation where they are friends with a different set of benefits. She cooks and buys his clothes, he kills spiders, changes lightbulbs and fixes the porch steps. It works for them.

Until it doesn’t.

Finn’s grandfather has just died. Instead of leaving his ranch to Finn, who has been working with him for that same last bunch of years, the old man left it to Finn and his three half-brothers equally. The Donnelly Brothers are all at crossroads in their lives, and they all move back to the ranch, into the house and the land that Finn expected would be his.

All of their relationships are strained and distant, and no one seems to be happy about any of it. So Finn, in a crazed need to re-establish control over something, anything, in his suddenly chaotic life, decides that he wants more from Lane than he’s ever asked for. He wants to push past their carefully maintained boundaries and turn their relationship into that of friends with the usual benefits.

He thinks its possible to make love and not feel at least a little love. And he’s an idiot.

Finn’s perfectly happy to tear down all of Lane’s defenses and push for whatever he wants. But when Lane turns the tables on him and starts pushing him for what she wants out of a relationship, he pushes her away as hard and as fast as he can.

The question of whether Finn can get his head out of his ass long enough to figure himself out is an open one. Finn needs to open his eyes, and his heart, before he throws away his best chance at happiness. And he needs to grovel.

Escape Rating C+: There was so much potential in Slow Burn Cowboy, but it never quite gels into the book that I was looking forward to.

Both Lane and Finn are damaged people, and neither of them thinks that they are worthy of happiness or love. They protect themselves in different ways. Lane by walling off what hurts her, and Finn by pushing away anyone who might get close enough to hurt him.

It’s amazing that they have managed to sustain a friendship, but they definitely have.

While Finn is a bit of an arsehole about it, his trauma is understandable. His dad seems to have been a serial philanderer, leaving a string of exes with his sons all across the country. Dad left everyone. But his mom also abandoned him. And he’s just sure everyone else will too.

Lane’s trauma just isn’t one that was easy for this reader to identify with. Her sense of loss at giving a baby up for adoption when she was sixteen is understandable, but she’s been wearing the past like a hair shirt ever since, to the point where the hair felt like it had been woven from a drama llama rather than anything real. Her story felt like angst for angst’s sake.

Also, these are two people who live inside their heads an awful lot, which also doesn’t feel right for Finn’s character. It felt like there was much more internal dialog than actual dialog. And Lane tended to think and talk in circles a lot of the time. That’s a habit that drives this reader crazy in real life, not just fictional life.

There are a lot of moments when the reader wants them to just stop talking inside their heads and let those words out where they might do some good!

But, and this is where the good stuff comes in, Copper Ridge just feels like a wonderful place. I like the people a lot. One of the great things in this story is all about the enduring power of women’s friendships. Lane, along with her best female friends, have a terrific, supportive and caring friendship. One of the ways in which Lane comes out of this story stronger than she went in is the realization that she is so much better off than she was when she arrived in Copper Ridge because those friendships will always see her through. She’s not alone, with or without Finn.

Finn’s supporting cast is his family, his three half-brothers and his niece Violet. They have all moved into the ranch and are now part of his life, where they have all been separate and alone up til now. Finn is really, really bad at letting people in, but having them be part of his life, whether he originally wanted it or not, is terrific. They bite and snap and growl at each other all the time, but they are all great characters and I’m looking forward to their stories in future books in the series.

~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

Maisey and Harlequin are giving away a $25 Gift Card to one lucky entrant on this tour.

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Review: Last Chance Rebel by Maisey Yates + Giveaway

Posted on by Marlene Harris | Author : | A- Reviews> blog tours> book reviews> Giveaways
Review: Last Chance Rebel by Maisey Yates + GiveawayLast Chance Rebel (Copper Ridge, #6) by Maisey Yates
Formats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
Series: Copper Ridge #6
Pages: 384
Published by HQN Books on August 30th 2016
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org
Goodreads

The prodigal son of Copper Ridge, Oregon, has finally come home 
The man who ruined Rebecca Bear's life just strolled back into it with one heck of an offer. Years ago, Gage West's recklessness left Rebecca scarred inside and out. Now he wants to make amends by gifting her the building that houses her souvenir store. Rebecca won't take Gage's charity, but she's willing to make a deal with the sexy, reclusive cowboy. Yet keeping her enemy close is growing dangerously appealing… 
He's the wild West brother, the bad seed of Copper Ridge. That's why Gage needs the absolution Rebecca offers. He just didn't expect to need her. After years of regretting his past, he knows where his future lies—with this strong, irresistible woman who could make a black sheep come home to stay…

My Review:

This is a challenging book. I mean that in the sense that it grabs the reader by the throat at the beginning, and doesn’t let go until the very end.

This also isn’t an easy story in a whole lot of ways. Our heroine begins the story brittle and scarred. Our hero has been her “monster in the closet” for well over a decade. He inflicted those scars. It’s over the course of the story that Rebecca discovers that, while Gage was most definitely the cause of her physical scars, the way that she has waved those scars as a flag, or used them as a whip and a chair to keep other people from getting too close, is pretty much all on her.

And while she is the one who carried all of the physical pain, Gage left with plenty of scars of his own. It’s just that all of his are on the inside. And even more self-inflicted, in more ways than one.

The beginning of this story happened long ago. Way back when Rebecca was a pre-teen and Gage was the town’s self-indulgent golden boy. He was also 18, making him young, dumb and too full of himself and testosterone. There’s a reason that teenage boys and cars are so frequently a dangerous mix.

Gage was playing “chicken” with his equally young and dumb friends, and crashed into an oncoming car. The car containing Rebecca and her mother. Gage and Rebecca’s mother both walked away with a few scratches, but Rebecca was carried out torn and twisted. Her needs and her rehabilitation drove her mother away. If her brother, barely 21, hadn’t stepped up, she’d have ended up in the foster care system or worse.

Gage’s father made it all go away. He paid off the family, and no charges were ever pressed. Gage ran away, and stayed away, for 17 years. Long enough for Rebecca and his siblings to grow up, and for his father to get old. He only comes back to fix his father’s surprisingly empty finances when the old man has a stroke.

So he decides to fix everything broken he left in Copper Ridge, starting with Rebecca. There’s an immediate problem with his plan – Rebecca doesn’t see herself as broken at all, and wants absolutely nothing to do with the man who she believes ruined her life.

And Gage refuses to take into account that the most broken person of all in this mess is Gage himself. His plan is to ride in, fix everything, and leave, never letting anyone else get close to him. He’s certain that’s what he deserves.

But Rebecca challenges him at every turn. She doesn’t want his money, she doesn’t need his help. She’s made a success of her life, owning her own store and her own house, having taken her determination to get beyond her injuries and make her own life.

But Gage continues to push, and Rebecca keeps pushing back. It is a very, very short distance between hate and love, especially when the person you’ve hated is just a monster in the closet, and the real flesh and blood person is so much more.

A relationship that should never have been helps Rebecca see into her broken places. Not the physical ones, but the emotional wounds she carries inside. And bringing those wounds into the light makes her whole, whether Gage is willing to go there with her, or not.

Escape Rating A-: There’s a grit to this story, and the character of Rebecca, that reminds me a whole lot of the utterly awesome, and incredibly hot After Hours by Cara McKenna. I’m not totally sure why, but it does. So if you like the one, you’ll probably like the other.

Rebecca’s character is what makes this story so good. We see inside her, and it’s not a pretty place. There’s nothing horrible, but she’s become much, much too good at keeping people at a distance. She’s afraid to let anyone close out of the fear that they might leave just the way her mother did. So she’s walling herself off from an emotional life. While there certainly is some truth that in a society that judges women on their appearance her scars might put some men off, she also keeps herself from developing close female friendships. She doesn’t let anyone in. And people who know her history let her have her way. She uses their pity at the same time she rejects it.

When Gage bursts into her life, she is forced to rethink many of her assumptions. Not just the ones about him, but the ones she has made about herself and everyone else. She finally figures out that her hatred of him, and her anger at her mother’s abandonment, aren’t hurting either of them. They are just holding her back. That she learns to let go, for her own sake and not for theirs, is the lesson of the book.

However, Gage holds himself back during the entire story. We don’t see the real him, or his real emotional state (which is a mess) until very, very late in the story. So he never becomes as strong a hero as she is a heroine. In some ways, he’s the rock that she dashes herself upon until she finally cracks open and lets all the bad stuff out. She needs that, but it it leaves his character and motivations a bit lacking.

There’s one final thought I want to leave you with. Something that Rebecca says near the end of the book has a great deal of resonance, not just for this story, but for life in general.

“Don’t hide it. And don’t pretend it isn’t there. That’s how we make monsters… By hiding ordinary things in the closet and letting them feed off the darkness.”

Rebecca lets the light in, no matter how much it hurts. That’s a big part of what makes her awesome.

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