Review:

I start reading Christmas and winter stories fairly early every year. This is a later than normal start for me, but I’m excited that I got to start with this Maisey Yates story. She is a new-to-me author, even though I’ve had my eye on her books for years. A Tall, Dark Cowboy Christmas is the fourth full-length novel in the Gold Valley Series, but I had no trouble using this book as a starting point.

This story features Grant Dodge and McKenna Tate. Grant and his siblings run the Get Out of Dodge Ranch in Gold Valley, Oregon. He is working thru grief associated with tragedy in his past, after marrying young and losing his wife to a terminal illness. Grant isn’t sure that he can love again and finds himself going thru the motions of life. Early in the story, late one night when he should be sleeping, he sees a light outside of his window and goes out to investigate. Grant finds McKenna sleeping in what should be an empty cabin out in the woods. After a brief, informal interview, she is offered a job. McKenna’s truck broke down nearby, so she decided to sleep in the empty cabin since she didn’t have any money. She has come to Gold Valley to track down her father after aging out of the foster care system. And she thinks Grant is handsome.

Neither Grant nor McKenna were looking for love, which is probably what made their story fun to me. I love a grumpy hero, and while Grant certainly wasn’t the grumpiest, he wasn’t always the most pleasant either. I think McKenna was fairly even-tempered and open-minded, for all that she had been through. I liked that they both were coming out of shaky pasts, but that they gave one another a chance and ended up with something wonderful. Reading their romance story set against a wintry, holiday ranch backdrop on a ranch made it all the better.

I mentioned that this book was a fine starting point for this already-established series, but it is obvious that there are other couples and stories from earlier books that I don’t know yet. I very rarely start mid-series but did in this case because it is a holiday story; if it were another part of the year, I would have started at the beginning. But I don’t really think there is meant to be a definite, set starting place here.

Contemporary romance series like these are certainly my favorites, and since I liked this one so much, I want to continue with this series and go back to the beginning as I am able to obtain them. I would also be up for reading Maisey Yates’ other cowboy books. I’m not sure if they connect to this series or not, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there is an overlap in at least a character or two.