For Love of a Cowboy

In For Love of a Cowboy (Montana Born Fair #3) byYvonne Lindsay, 27 year old Willow has come from New Zealand to Marietta, Montana to find her father.  Willow lost her mother to cancer, and after finding her diaries, thinks she's found her father.  She is searching for a place to belong.

Booth is a Marietta man.  Protective of his family and his town, the instant he sees Willow he pegs her for a transient hippy who will end up using and hurting people, especially his family.  He reluctantly helps Willow out, hoping it will make her leave sooner, hoping he can ignore the impossible attraction he feels for her.  But Willow has a lot on her plate.  She is determined to meet her father, she needs to make a living, and she likes Marietta.  She also likes Booth way more than she should.

As Booth battles preconceived notions and mistrust, he continues to try to push Willow away from him and out of Marietta.  Willow resents how he treats her, but at times they really click and the chemistry sizzles between them.  Neither wants to back down from their end goal though, and soon Booth might have pushed Willow far enough that he's pushed away any chance for her not only to belong in Marietta, but to belong with him.

There is nothing straight forward about the romance in For Love of a Cowboy.  Willow and Booth both have a lot of issues from their past that continue to weigh heavily on them.  Yvonne writes characters with a lot of inner conflict that makes the journey to romance anything but smooth.  I liked watching Booth and Willow's push and pull, wondering what would happen next with them.  Both of them are strong characters, but I would have liked a little more of a background on Willow and her mother to help round out Willow's characters.  I did enjoy the journey Willow and Booth took us on, and their character growth is very noticeable.

The concept of Willow and Booth's relationship is believable.  How Willow goes about getting to Marietta from New Zealand with no money or real plan outside of finding her father is a little out of the ordinary, but her feelings are easy to relate to.

I love the secondary characters, some we've seen in previous Montana Born Books, with the subtle interlinking that brings everyone together but at the same time makes it easy to read For Love of a Cowboy alone.

I love the setting and the fair, I can just picture all the booths Yvonne describes!

For Love of a Cowboy is a great well paced summer read that I'd recommend to all romance readers.

4/5 stars