I received this book for free from Avon in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
Restless Rancher by Jennifer RyanAlso in this series: Dirty Little Secret, Tough Talking Cowboy
Series: Wild Rose Ranch #2
Published by Avon on November 12, 2019
Genres: Contemporary Romance, American West, Small Town
Pages: 384
Format: eARC
Source: Avon
ISBN: 0062917234
8 hours, 16 minutes
Meet the women of the Wild Rose Ranch—and the men who want to tame them—in New York Times Bestselling Author Jennifer Ryan’s breathtaking series of romance and scandal . . .
One minute down-on-his-luck rancher Austin Hubbard slept soundly, the next, a sassy spitfire dumped a pitcher of water on his head and woke him up—in more ways than one. Hired to help him rebuild his ranch, Sonya Turner ends up helping him put the tattered pieces of his life back together. The capable, all-business accountant is on a mission to get the ranch up and running, but can he convince the temptingly beautiful woman to take a chance on him?
Sonya was dismayed that Austin had lost it all: money, family, respectability. Things she—who’d been raised by her mother at Nevada’s notorious brothel Wild Rose Ranch—only dreamed about. But working with the long, lean cowboy shows her that Austin is honorable to his core. Together they slowly grow to see what the love between them might bring.
But then Austin’s powder keg of a family feud explodes, exposing long-buried secrets, and threatening their new-found love…
*Contains Spoilers, Readers BeAware*
Restless Rancher is book two in our Wild Rose Ranch series by Jennifer Ryan. After loving book one, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the second book and boy I should have read this sooner because this book was simply fantastic for sure. Now, this didn’t have quite the emotional intensity that I have normally felt in her previous books, but it definitely had plenty of feels just works the reader differently than you would normally expect and I found it refreshing actually that she switched things up a bit.
In Restless Rancher, our story begins with our hero Austin Hubbard, who is having a rough patch in his life. His grandfather has passed away and Austin is trying to do everything her can to keep the land from getting into his father’s greedy hands, and his ex-girlfriend ran to her father’s arms and our story starts with her trying to seduce him so she can have his baby under his father’s insistence. But Austin is determined to stand up to his father. With the help of Roxy, he is sent help to refurbish his grandfather’s home and get the place back in working order. Roxy sends him her sister “Sonya” to assist him and she is badass in getting him back into working and not drowning in self-pity and the bottle.
Everything would be different now. He didn’t need to drink away the pain because he had a purpose and a goal he could actually achieve.
As they start working together, there are sparks of chemistry that builds between them. And even though they aren’t sure where their relationship is headed, they both feel how ‘real’ it is for both of them. But there is something more going on with the reasons why his father wants his land so badly and the closer they get to the truth, the more dangerous it becomes…
This was a fantastic book and I truly loved every part of this book. It was so good in so many ways here and I couldn’t get enough of it. It was quite different. But first I want to talk COVER. Now I love this cover, but my only complaint is how different it is from the cover of book one. They so don’t match and I would have wish Avon had done a more focused job on making sure they matched better. Am I the only one that was bothered by this?
Now to continue on with the actual story. This was quite a mystery actually. At first, you don’t connect the dots to the actual mystery of it all. But the further you get into the story the more the cards start to fall into place and you realize it. In the first half of the story, the focus is the romance between Sonya and Austin which is a mix of sass and sweet. They are refurbishing and doing lots of construction on his grandfather’s home. What I appreciated about this aspect is seeing the emotional effect it has on Austin. Seeing someone he deeply loved and having to go through his things. But as the romance builds between these two is when things get even more interesting. His father is one mean piece of work that is for sure and we see how greedy he is. We see Austin and Sonya learn to figure out what they want in their relationship and find out what is really going on with the land.
You like numbers. As I see it, you and me, we add up to forever.
Now for Sonya, her story is more side lined because of what Austin is going through. Now don’t get me wrong, in most romances we see the heroine being the focus point so it was truly refreshing to see it be the hero at the focus point. But we see what her mother has gone through which is vastly different from what we see with Roxy’s mother. We see the effects of abuse and trauma and it really broke my heart to see what Sonya and her mother go through. I was literally SOBBING at the end with the HEA her mother found, so beautiful and heartfelt.
Overall I found Restless Rancher to be a sexy yet heartwrenching read that tugs at those emotions in such a vibrant real way that is undeniable and true.
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