Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Tempted By A Cowboy-Sarah M. Anderson

Tempted By A Cowboy
Sarah M. Anderson
Harlequin Desire, Oct 7 2014, $5.25
ISBN: 9780373733460

Jo Spears drives from Kentucky to her new job as a horse trainer at Beaumont Farms near Denver where she will work her mojo on Kandar’s Golden Sun.  She knows she has come a long way from her addictions to alcohol and sex with body scars to remind her and plans to remain vigilant to insure she stays clean.  Her boss millionaire rancher Phillip Beaumont also is an alcoholic and serial womanizer who uses his prominent family name as a façade for his despicable behavior.

When the employee and the employer meet, she keeps an emotional distance while he struggles to accept a woman not jumping his bones.  As Phillip observes her passion for his horses, he feels confused as he wants more than his usual quick tryst while Jo mentally battles a potentially new addiction: her boss.

With a nod to The Lost Weekend, this Beaumont Heirs (see Not The Boss’s Baby) tale is an awesome drama that looks deeply at the impact an addict has on their family.  For the most part, the reluctant (on her part especially) relationship enhances the profound effect of addiction on the user and loved ones.  That is except for a final forgiveness that we ironically root to happen and expect in a romance, but feels wrong anyway after we got to know the good, the bad and the ugly motivators of both of this fully-developed couple.  Still this is a potent contemporary.

Harriet Klausner

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