After a decade away, Hugo Turner is ready to return to his small Texas hometown, and all that that entails: his relationship with his mother, the abuse his stepbrother brought upon him, and the crush he had on his best friend's brother.  He'd never forgotten Brand Woods, and Brand had never forgotten him, but Brand isn't sure he's ready to come out as being bisexual yet.  There's no denying the chemistry between the two, though, and when push comes to shove, will they each be brave enough to live as their true selves?

I don't read a lot of cowboy romance, so I was really interested to see how this author was going to reconcile a largely conservative culture with an MM romance.  It was really satisfying to see the heroes both acknowledge the shortcomings of the culture they were raised in, from Confederate flags to bigoted churches to just ingrained homophobia.  

This book had some pretty significant challenges for me, all while being an overall engrossing read.  The plot meanders a lot, particularly into some weird asides - I think there's six or seven instances of someone peeing in this book, which just seems like too much, among other one or two paragraph oddities here and there, including a whole allusion to

Brand having fathered a child with a high school girlfriend that is truly never explored.  Maybe it'll be in a future book but it just seemed so out of place

.  Otherwise, I struggled with Brand and his internalized homophobia/biphobia at points: he was a Real Shit when his older brother came out as gay, and while I think it was dealt with in a fairly realistic way, it still wasn't great.  Additionally, his dad outs him to his mom in a way that is like very benign, but in this house we don't out people.

In the end, I did enjoy this book and the way that Brand and Hugo eased into a relationship with each other.  I'd like to read the earlier series about the ranch Brand's brother owns, and would definitely pick up other books in this series.  Thank you Harlequin and NetGalley for the ARC!

CW:

physical and, like, visual sexual assault by a stepbrother that never involves the narrative character but definitely is seeing Things against the character's will; homophobia/biphobia, animal in danger (the animal is fine); false accusation leading to a brief arrest