A Cowboy Like You

A Cowboy Like You

Heart of Texas

Donna Grant

St. Martins Press, Nov 26, 2019

304 pages

Western Romance, Second Chance Romance

Provided by Author’s rep via NetGalley

⭐⭐⭐⭐

The cover doesn’t tell us much except that we’re dealing with a good-looking, clean-cut, hardworking cowboy. But that’s probably enough to get most of us who like this genre to buy the book!

Danny’s just eating his take-out at the rest stop on his night off as the local sheriff when a fancy car pulls in and parks. Then a second expensive car pulls in next to the first one.

Skylar drove past the bar and checked to be sure that Matt was there with his friends before hightailing it out of Houston. She wasn’t going to stick around to be Matt’s punching bag. When she saw headlights in her rearview mirror, she pulled into the rest stop and parked. Sure enough, Matt pulled into the space next to her and stepped out of the car. He slammed his hands on the hood of her car. The dent could be hammered out, she knew. Broken bones were much harder to heal.

It wasn’t until Matt had been taken away in a cruiser by the deputy that Danny and Skylar got to see each other closely enough to recognize each other. There was the girl he never felt he was good enough to try for; and “she knew that if anyone could protect her, it was Danny Oldman.”

This is a second chance western love story that takes a young sheriff who’s headed towards being a lonely drunk in spite of his good friends’ best efforts and a former local girl who escaped to the big city and liked it until she ran into domestic violence and brings them back together to heal each other. We seem to see domestic violence a lot more in romances these days as it becomes something authors feel they want to address or expose in any way they can. Ms. Grant deals quite well with it in her story. She also has created very good characters for us in this book. You feel for Danny in the first chapter when he is thinking about his loneliness and his job, about eating or not and about drinking. You can understand how he has come to this point where it’s almost more of an effort than it’s worth to get dressed and get something to eat because there is nothing to eat in the house. The author makes you feel his despondency. You also feel the hope spark when Danny and Skylar recognize each other at the rest stop. Ms. Grant does a wonderful job drawing us into the feelings of her characters and making us part of the story. There’s plenty of action later on as well. And as it’s a second chance story, love wins out in the end. So we do have a HEA with this one. Recommended.