ŷ������

“Real-life barns aren’t nearly as picturesque as Yellowstone makes them look.��

Remember how I said I don’t read books with cheap, ugly comic book covers? Yeah, me too. But here we are, even though this is one of the worst. The blurb just sounded too good and very much my thing.

And the book started out very well. City girl Molly inherits a huge cattle ranch and a lot of money from her estranged father, but there’s a stipulation in his last will. Before she can access the money or sell the ranch, she must live there for one year and help run it. To do this, she needs the support of the ranch’s foreman, Cash. (Very fitting name, right?) Not surprisingly, Cash has little to no desire to take the city girl by the hand, especially since her father has promised him the ranch.

Tensions are inevitable. They vent in quarrels and then in banter, but Cash and Molly also quickly begin to respect, like, and trust each other. And of course there’s also sexual tension, a whole lot of it. Claiming that a romantic relationship between them is impossible, they refuse to give in and dance around each other.

This is the good part of the book—it covers Molly’s first two weeks at the ranch. Then the unfulfilled lust becomes too much for Molly, so she invites Palmer, her occasional hookup from Dallas, to the ranch to relieve her pent-up lust for Cash. Um�� excuse me, what? Not sure how many women would do that instead of using a vibrator in this situation, but what do I know. Molly does it, and it’s incredibly thoughtless and blatant to get the hookup on the ranch, thinking/hoping no one will take notice when everyone at the ranch knows everything about everyone else.

Needless to say, Cash notices the visitor, especially when she drags Palmer to the bar where the small town meets on Fridays. So we get a bar fight first and a ridiculous bar sex scene later. From there it’s mostly sex and figuring out the future. They are both all in, including marriage and family planning, and it got more and more boring. I mean, I’m glad there’s no stupid third act breakup, and it’s always nice to see people solve their problems by talking reasonably, but it all happened too fast and easy. They went from zero to three hundred.

Despite the so-so story, I really liked the characters. I’ve seen reviews about Molly’s despicable greed for money and ungratefulness (towards her father) and how Cash is nothing but a heartless, mean asshole for treating Molly so badly in the beginning. I don’t agree. I think their behavior is perfectly explainable and believable and not too condemnable.

It’s true, Molly did not have a relationship with her dad, and that’s more on her dad and her mom than on her, because she was a child when it happened. However, she always had the hope that maybe one day she would fix it but now it’s too late. She’s angry, and sad, and remorseful, and the stipulation feels like another rejection. Molly’s grief is painful and real. And once she’s at the ranch, she really gets involved. She changes and she starts to love the life of her father—the ranch, the land, the people. It makes her feel closer to him than ever.

As for Cash, he had a very close relationship with Molly’s dad. Garrett was more of a father to him and his four brothers than he was to his own daughter. He took Cash under his wing and showed him everything he needed to know about running a ranch. When he finds out that Molly will inherit the ranch after all, even though her father promised it to Cash, is a big blow to him. He IS an asshole, but he’s also angry and devastated because there goes his and his brother’s future. Of course, it‘s not fair to blame Molly for her father’s broken promise, but it’s easy to comprehend his resentment toward her. Particularly since she makes it clear that she wants to sell the ranch after her mandatory stay. Cash’s reaction is human, all the more since his interest is not only financial; he has dedicated his life to the ranch and he loves it. He’s not stubborn either, he quickly realizes that Molly is more than he thought, that she’s Garrett’s daughter through and through. Then he is very attentive, thoughtful and devoted.

So again, as so often, I liked the MCs and the first half of the story, but after the first sex it went downhill and got boring. What I liked in particular, though, was the cowboy feeling. Given, I don’t have a clue about real ranch life, but this book feels more like cowboy reality than most cowboy books. And the preview of “Wyatt�� made me curious about the sequel, especially because I already loved Wyatt here.


Overall: 3.5
Story: 3
Emotion: 3
Cash: 4
Molly: 4