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Four Corners Ranch, Book 5

From the publisher:

A fresh start is all she wants this Christmas, but maybe a cowboy is all she needs…

It’s not the holiday season she’d envisioned. But moving back home with her son, Benny, is all single mom Elizabeth Colfax can do after her ex-husband’s infidelity left their life in pieces. A fresh start at Four Corners Ranch means Elizabeth’s dream career in equine therapy can become a reality, allowing her to share her love of horses with Benny. If only it didn’t also mean butting heads with Brody McCloud, the frustratingly attractive cowboy who sets sparks off inside her.

Brody doesn’t do complicated, and Elizabeth’s got more baggage than an airport. But there’s something about the woman that’s always gotten under his skin in a very welcome way. As the simmering tension between them grows harder to ignore, they’ll have to decide if their undeniable attraction can outweigh a shared loss of faith in forever. Maybe this Christmas, they can find a family worth fighting for.

In the bonus novella Wild Night Cowboy, can a cowboy with a dark past find his future with the one woman he shouldn’t touch?

Four Corners Ranch

Book 1: Unbridled Cowboy
Book 2: Merry Christmas Cowboy
Book 3: Cowboy Wild
Book 4: The Rough Rider
Book 5: The Holiday Heartbreaker
Book 6: The Troublemaker

https://amzn.to/3QkCm0r

I love me a good cowboy romance, and throw some Christmas into the mix, and I am one happy reader! Yates always writes good books, and this is a terrific addition to a really fun series. I started reading this last year with the Christmas book in the series, but the rest of the books are not holiday-centric, until this one. That said, they are all good and while I think it helpful to read in order, they all stand alone just fine. So if you want to start here, you will not feel like you missed a thing.

The setting is Four Corners Ranch, an unusual spread in that it is owned by four different families, each with their own type of business. This book is set on the McCloud family’s ranch, that specializes in equine therapy. Owned by a family of brothers, Gus, the eldest, hires Elizabeth Colfax to run the therapy side of the things. They offer her a small home on the property, and she is thrilled.

Elizabeth had a rough childhood, growing up in the foster care system. She met Carter in high school and never had another boyfriend. They married young and had a son, Benny, but by the time he was two years old, Carter had fallen in love with someone else – and she was pregnant. He dumped Elizabeth in a heartbeat and remarried the new baby mama. She was devastated, mostly because of her childhood of abandonment. She moves into a tiny apartment with Benny, and her ex blows off most of his weekends with his son over the next several years to concentrate on his new famlily. Finally, Elizabeth decides to do something for herself and with the court’s approval, takes the job three hours away on the ranch.

There she meets Brody McCloud, one of the younger McCloud brothers and one of two that are still unmarried. There is a strong attraction between them, but they both fight it – until they can’t. Despite their wealth, the McCloud brothers grew up with an extremely abusive father, and a mother who was so abused that she left them all. Weirdly, Brody was the only son that his father never abused, and he has survivor’s guilt, among other issues.

As Brody and Elizabeth get to know one another, they both realize they are revealing things to one another that they have never spoken aloud before. Their relationship deepens, but Brody has long decided that marriage isn’t for him. He is a one-night stand sort of guy and very up front about it. Elizabeth decides to go for it anyway since she has no other dating experience, and once they end up in bed, all bets are off.

There are more than the usual hurdles here with all the trauma in their backgrounds, but these two fall in love, fighting it every second of the way. It was rewarding to see Elizabeth learn about sex, too – her limited experience with her ex left much to be desired. I loved watching these characters help heal one another and form a blended family. I was very sorry to turn the last page, and I’m looking forward to the next book in the series.

11/2023 Stacy Alesi, AKA the BookBitch

THE HOLIDAY HEARTBREAKER by Maisey Yates. Canary Street Press; Original edition (September 26, 2023). ISBN: 978-1335600790. 432p.

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This entry was posted on Friday, November 3rd, 2023 at 9:00 AM and is filed under Book Reviews, Fiction, Romance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.