Peter Styles

I’m really struggling with this review. On the one hand, it had an interesting overall concept. Kyle’s mother recently passed, he has some guilt or depression (or so I assume) surrounding that, and his relationship with his sister is poor. He’s having trouble finding a job and sees an comment posted by a high school friend looking for a ranch hand. He goes to work there, falls in love, and all is well in the land of cowboys.

Unfortunately, there were too many things that threw me out of the story. In the beginning, Kyle calls AJ “Allen Jr” all the time. AJ tried to correct him, but it takes time for him to get it right. I feel like he was calling him Allen Jr to distinguish him from the father who was Allen Sr, but I have a hard time believing that he was called Allen Jr all through his youth. Since they were supposedly friends in school, you’d think he’d be able to nail the nickname. Another thing that bothered me was that AJ called him Robbins the WHOLE TIME. Now, I get that you grow up with nicknames and that you use them forever. Totally get that. It did, however, seem a little impersonal during intimate moments.

I also had a very hard time liking Kyle. He was rude for no reason, especially to the father. He was a guest in their home and was not pleasant. I didn’t like his attitude most of the time, primarily toward AJ when he was pretending nothing was happening.

What I did like was AJ. He was such a sweetheart. He bent over backwards to make Kyle comfortable and happy. He was always happy and doing whatever he could for everyone else. He was a stand up guy who deserves all the happiness in the world.

I listened to this in audio, and perhaps that is one thing that made me not love it as much. The narrator did a great job of differentiating voices and telling the story, but I wonder if I would have read some of Kyle’s responses and reactions a little less rude without hearing attitude. Im not sure. The narrator was new to me, though, and I would listen to him again.

I am voluntarily reviewing an ARC provided by LesCourt Author Services … (more)