TEST
The first books by A.M Arthur I read were from her Clean Slate Ranch series set on a dude ranch in California and telling the stories of the guys who stayed and/or worked there, the ‘magic’ of the place putting people in the right place at the right time to find new lives and loves. Those books were solid, B grade reads, so when I saw the author was embarking on a new series, I decided to give His Fresh Start Cowboy a read. I hadn’t realised it’s actually a spin-off from the Clean Slate series – or at least, that this book starts there – so while readers coming to it without having read any of the others might need a little time to work out the family/friendship connections, it’s easy enough to do.
Hugo Taylor left his home in Texas some ten years earlier to get away from the constant bullying and physical abuse meted out to him by his stepbrother Buck. Now twenty-seven, he’s been working at the Clean Slate Ranch for the last couple of years; he’s good with horses and he likes the work and the people, finding among them a sense of belonging and family he hasn’t experienced since his dad died and his mum remarried. It wasn’t until he’d been there a while that one of the ranch hands, Colt Woods, actually realised who he was – that Hugo had been his younger brother Rem’s best friend at school. Hugo knows, deep down, that Clean Slate was never meant to be his final destination, no matter how much he likes it there, so when he hears Colt talking about his father’s problem in hiring new hands, Hugo starts to wonder if maybe it’s time for him to go home. Time to build bridges with his mother now Buck is out of the picture (he’s in prison) and maybe see if it’s possible to build anything with the man who gave him his first kiss and then promptly broke his heart a decade earlier – Brand Woods.
Brand has a lot on his plate. As the second Woods son, he was never meant to take over running the family business, but when Colt up and left, Brand set aside his own dreams to take over as foreman at the ranch. Now, with his father semi-retired, Brand is in charge – although some days, he can’t help wondering if his dad completely trusts him with the business and whether he’d still be as hands-on if Colt had stayed. When his father tells him he’s hired Hugo Taylor, Brand is thrown off balance. He’d known of sixteen-year-old Hugo’s crush on him for some time and had tried to ignore it until the night Hugo kissed him – the night everything Brand had thought he knew about himself had been upended. Hugo is one of the only people who knows that Brand is bisexual and he can’t help being apprehensive about seeing him again. Although Brant’s family was supportive when Colt came out as gay, Brand has never told them about himself; not because he fears their reaction (although he does think his father will be disappointed if Brand doesn’t have a son to pass the ranch on to), but because it fears it could damage the business if some in their conservative community refuse to do business with someone who’s queer. Brand doesn’t plan on coming out – and in any case, as an employee, Hugo is off limits.
Hugo and Brand are complex, likeable characters with very real problems and issues to contend with, but their chemistry is lukewarm at best and Brand’s move from being determined to keep his distance from Hugo to deciding to disregard his own rule is really sudden and comes from nowhere. It seemed I was expected to accept he and Hugo were attracted to each other because of Hugo’s old crush – and when Hugo admitted to having loved Brand since he was sixteen, I just couldn’t buy it because I’d seen very little to back it up. They don’t spend enough time together on the page, Brand’s blow hot/blow cold attitude towards Hugo became very frustrating very quickly, and I didn’t like that he was prepared to talk to other people about his relationship with Hugo rather than talking about it with Hugo himself. Plus, stories where one protagonist has to be clued-in to the way the other protagonist feels about them by a third party are a personal pet peeve.
But I did like a lot of other things about the book. The setting is well-realised, the characterisation is strong throughout, and I liked Hugo’s determination to face his past and try to reconnect with his mother; so often characters running from their past are forced to face it, but Hugo chooses to and I appreciated his courage in doing that. Of all the characters in the story, Hugo is the most sympathetic and well-written, and the author conveys his complicated family situation, his insecurities and heartbreak very well. I liked that, despite his on/off attitude towards Hugo, Brand is there for him when Hugo really needs him, and I appreciated the way the Woods family so quickly accepts him into the fold.
Ultimately however, I read this for the romance, and although there are a lot of things about the book that work, the romance isn’t really one of them. I may pick up the next in the series, as there are characters in this one I’d be interested in reading more about, but I can’t quite offer His Fresh Start Cowboy a recommendation.
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Grade: C+
Book Type: Contemporary Romance
Sensuality: Warm
Review Date: 31/01/22
Publication Date: 01/2022
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.
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Are Rem and Brant the same person, or is there a third son? I liked the Clean Slate series, but skipped Colt’s story because I’m not interested in BDSM, even the light variety. I think most of the series were B or B- for me, but realistically I know the narration by Greg Boudreaux gave them all a bump up. I’m not sure I would have read them all in print.
No, Brand is the middle Woods brother and Rem(ington) is the youngest. Colt’s book was my least favourite of the Clean Slate books, too.