Gunslinger, Book 1
Gray “Quick Shot” Woodson is the fastest gun west of the Mississippi. Unfortunately, he’s ready to hang up his hat. Sure, being notorious has its perks. But the nomadic lifestyle―and people always tryin’ to kill you―gets old real fast.
Now he just wants to find a place to retire so he can spend his days the way the good Lord intended. Staring at the sunset. And napping.
When his stubborn horse drags him into a hole-in-the-wall town called Desolation, something about the place calls to Gray, and he figures he might actually have a shot at a sleepy retirement.
His optimism lasts about a minute and a half.
Soon he finds himself embroiled in a town vendetta and married to a woman named Mercy. Who, judging by her aggravating personality, doesn’t know the meaning of her own name. In fact, she’s downright impossible.
But dang it if his wife isn’t irresistible. If only she’d stop trying to steal his guns to go after the bad guys herself.
There goes his peace and quiet…
This was a very different read for me. It’s an historical cowboy romance, and I really loved it!
Gray is a gunslinger who has the reputation of being unstoppable, with a trail of dead bodies behind him to prove it. Turns out he “accidentally” got into it when he was defending himself. He learned to shoot as a child, and is quite skilled, but he is really tired of people trying to kill him just for the prestige of it.
Gray ends up in the little town of Desolation, where he meets Mercy. She offers him a place to sleep and meals if he will help her with one of her neighbors. It seems the man is trying every which way to get his hands on the property she just inherited when her father passed away. He tries proposing, threatening, offering money, but she doesn’t want to sell. Gray agrees to basically be her bodyguard, but when push comes to shove, Mercy blurts out that he is her fiancé, and the fake romance takes off.
Gray is a bit of a curmudgeon, and all he is really interested in is food and napping, but Mercy is a terrible cook and his naps keep getting interrupted. When he ends up shooting the gun out Mercy’s nemesis’s hand, the whole town is intrigued. But the sheriff is scared and takes off in the middle of the night. Gray is offered the position, which he finds hilarious as he’s always been on the wrong side of the law but eventually he takes it. And he soon learns what it means to be accepted, by a woman and a town.
Mercy and Gray marry, and he soon learns that caring about people may be dangerous to his health. Things come to a head with a shootout in the streets and of course, the happy ending. This was a really fun read, a hot romance, and I couldn’t put it down. Really looking forward to the next book in this series!
8/2021 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch
HITCHED TO THE GUNSLINGER by Michelle McLean. Entangled: Amara (August 24, 2021). ISBN: 978-1649370228. 1330 pages.
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