Review: Bad News Cowboy by Maisey Yates

This book was okay. I didn't dislike the story quite as much as I disliked the second book in the series.  But I still had issues with it.  Time to accept that cowboy stories and small town, family stories are really not my thing.  I think I'm probably a little too picky about romances, I seem to like certain ones a lot and others not much at all.  There's rarely any in-between with me. This one didn't fit into my "type."

This story is about the Garrett's little sister, Kate. She's in her early twenties and has never even been kissed.  She was raised by her brothers after her mother left and her father was too drunk to be of much help. I'm usually a fan of awkward characters, but this character wasn't a sort of awkward to which I could relate. I grew up around rodeo people, spent many weekends at rodeos.  I kept picturing some of the rodeo girls I knew and well, Yates captured the character fairly accurately. But at the same time, I never much liked those people, because of their awkwardness and weird clothes - the big hair and the starched shirts.  There's a scene in which Kate attempts to get dressed up for a date and I cringed picturing the clothes she put on.

Anyway, after a lifetime of never giving boys much thought, suddenly Kate is lusting after her brothers' friend Jack, who she has known since she was a small child.  That isn't completely strange - he was a familiar, attractive presence in her life and it isn't like she knew many other men. He seems like an obvious choice for her.

My biggest problem with the story though was Jack. Over and over again, we're told that he helped Eli and Connor Garrett raise their little sister Katie.  So he's sort of a big brother to her, in spirit if not in blood.  Again, this made me think of people I know, family friends who were like family. The idea of there being any sort of relationship really creeped me out.  He knew her as a small child and helped care for her.  Maybe if Katie had gone away to college or been out riding the rodeo circuit for a while and then returned and he realized she was all grown up, I would have be more okay with the relationship. But that isn't the case. He sees her on a regular basis, having dinner and playing poker at her brother's house, always thinking of her as a little sister. Then she makes clear she wants more and without much hesitation, he goes for it.

I didn't find their relationship very realistic or convincing. The jump from seeing her as his best friends' little sister to his lover was a bit too abrupt.  And him deciding he loved her seemed to be more a case of simply wanting something stable for once in his life and being flattered that she wanted him.

Overall, I just didn't like this book much.  Simply not my kind of story.  I need to be able to relate to the characters somehow in order to fully enjoy a book like this, and nothing these characters did made sense to me.

I did enjoy reading about the wedding of Eli and Sadie (from Part Time Cowboy, the first book in this series, which I liked quite a bit.)  Some of my favorite scenes though were not between Jack and Kate, but rather the interactions with Connor, or Jack dealing with his own family.  I continue to strongly dislike Connor's wife, Liss. She may have been even more annoying in this book.  Even though the story didn't resonate with me, the writing is still strong. And even though I wasn't convinced by the romance, the sex scenes are still pretty hot.

I received a review copy via NetGalley.