I grabbed Hunter Moon, by Cait Lavender, from the Amazon KDP list.
Description from Goodreads:
Bawling cattle tore Shelby Flint from her bed. With lawyer fees to pay in her struggle to keep her ranch from the clutches of her greedy cousins, she couldn’t afford the loss of even one calf. When she sees a large wolf circling her cows, she aims and fires. While the wolf escapes, Shelby can’t seem to get away from her troubles when a marijuana grower sets up shop on her land, sabotaging her property and eventually coming after her. Adding to that, a handsome game warden is poking his nose into her business and working his way underneath her skin. Shelby will have to fight harder than she ever fought before to keep from losing heart and everything she ever loved.
Review:
I really quite enjoyed Hunter Moon. I found Shelby’s prickly cowgirl persona appealing. I liked her sarcastic narration (even if it was largely in first person). Cash was sexy and protective without falling over into overbearing territory too often and I adored his exposed, vulnerable moments. The side characters were colourful, the writing easy to read, and it was really quite clean. There was a lot of sexual tension, but no actual sex. All-in-all a satisfying read.
A lot of page-time was dedicated to describing what Shelby owned, especially in the beginning (vehicles, animals, guns, guns, and more guns). I found this distracting, but at the same time I also appreciated that it made it apparent that she was of a normal socio-economic strata. She lived in a trailer instead of a quaint cabin. She had more than one car/truck, but they were as old as her. She owned a ranch, but wasn’t making bank with it. She seemed normal in this respect. I sometimes feel like normal is a rare bird in fantasy. (Who wants to read about the norm after all?) But in this case I liked it. It made her more relatable. Which was good because I couldn’t really relate to the gun crazed cowgirl that she was the rest of the time. I liked her, but couldn’t relate to her.
I did feel like the three primary threads (romance, mystery, and family/legal drama) didn’t really weave together. I kept waiting for them to and had even decided how it was most likely to happen, but it never did. However, they may come together later in the series. In once sense this is good. I would be calling the plot out as predictable if it did, but as it stands the whole family/legal drama seemed unnecessary. It didn’t seem to contribute to the story much.
The book ends on a cliffhanger. [I’m getting so tired of reading books that don’t end.] It’s not as precipitous as some I’ve come across, but there is obvuously more to come. I looked into buying the sequel as soon as I finished this one, which is solid evidence I enjoyed Hunter Moon. The problem is that the next one, Cowboy Moon, appears to be a prequel instead a sequel, is very short, AND is also a cliffhanger. Serial cliffhangers are something I avoid. As much as I enjoyed this book and would like to know what happens to Shelby next I don’t know that I’ll read anymore.