.

It wasn't bad, especially considering that it is a contemporary western romance, a tricky genre to get right. The suspense co-plot was above average, but the relationship lacked depth and motivation. Picky, picky, picky! Isn't him being a hot cowboy and her having a nice ass enough? Fairly spicy. Lots of guns. Only for those who enjoy this sort of thing.

This was cute - the romance, I mean - but as always I appreciate how real Linda Howard can make the fear. Women are vulnerable and thus since childhood trained to make themselves as safe as possible, and I think this was nicely shown. I liked it, really. It felt realistic, particularly how slow Carlin was to trust anyone after the scare with the weirdo psycho.

This was an ok read for me. I liked Zeke and Carlin was ok. I think the hard thing about this book is just that it's so long-winded. There are so many parts that could be shortened or cut because it was jusy rehashing the same things over and over. Like, I get it, I get it, Carlin is afraid to get involved with another man and Zeke wants to get with Carlin but doesn't want to move too fast and scare her away.... I don't need 200 pages of internal dialog explaining this. And so much time is wasted on this and Carlin making shopping lists that's there's no real time for romance. The MCs never really have a conversation that's not about Carlin's stalker. I wish more time had been spent on their relationship and less time spent on Carlin worrying about making a good cake.

This is the second book I've read from Linda Howard and I must say I enjoyed this one a lot more. The characters were well developed. I also really enjoy the psycho criminals she conjures up. Although you don't know much about Brad or the events that caused her to leave until much later I never found the story lacking. The only reason why I gave this story 3 stars instead of more is because I felt that the story dragged on a little to long. This might just be my personal taste but I understand that there has to be some "idle" time so that Carlin can begin to let down her guard a bit and want to stay.

review to post soon

Really strong story and plot! A good mixture of different POVs among characters while not neglecting the main leads and their budding romance. I wish there was more fluff, more insight to how they fall madly in love with each other instead of a time jump and “over the last few weeks we grew closer.” Like SHOW ME!!

I enjoyed this story, though I will say that it wasn't the deepest story that I've ever read. It was a little predictable. I knew some things were going to happen and started guessing about halfway through which of many events was going to be the one that tipped the scale. Carlin Reed and Zeke Decker are an interesting couple, but you knew even before they got to "coupledom" that they were going to get together. I do think that the idea that you can go from never having cooked anything much to cooking large delicious meals for a group of 10 men overnight is a little unrealistic. So if you are looking for a fun, light, somewhat predictable read with a mega happy ending, you have a winner with this one. Yes, I know the "mega happy ending" label spoils the ending a little, but you will have figured out that there was going to be a mega happy ending within the first couple of chapters.

definition of a meh romance book