His Fresh Start Cowboy: A Gay Cowboy Romance

I loved this one! Man, did Hugo have a rough life. I swear he never seems to catch a break. Yet he kept on going and never let himself stay down for long. Hugo left town when he was young for mainly two reasons: His home life wasn't safe or healthy and because of his long time unrequited crush on his best friends older brother. And yet he comes back over a decade later for both of those same reasons. To see if the man he's always loved will give them a chance and to gace some things he's been running from for way too long. But he learns that what he wants is no easy feat. Brand is a good man with a secret that he's only ever told 2 people, and because of that, he pushes Hugo away when he comes back. Constantly. So much so that it almost drove me crazy! But when you have a pull like that to someone, it isn't easy to just give up and stay away especially when they work on your ranch and you've never forgotten them.But I'm glad they couldn't stay away because they were really meant to be.

Yay, a new series by A.M. Arthur! A spinoff of their Clean Slate Ranch series, you can read *His Fresh Start Cowboy* as a standalone. There's mention of characters from the Ranch, Brand is Colt's brother, but you don't need to know anything about the past series to completely enjoy this one. A.M. Arthur does an excellent job with Brand - coming out as bi, wrapping his head around his attraction to Hugo, dealing with career choices, and other family drama. Hugo is more straight forward, but he's got some serious demons to overcome. Just like in real life, everything doesn't go smoothly, nor does it all go his way... but you know he's going to do whatever he needs to get his man! Woods Ranch is still at the beginning stages of its reincarnation under Brand's leadership. But they've got a strong, accepting family and A.M. Arthur lays plenty of seeds for future episodes in this wonderful new series.

There was a lot to this book and for the most part I really liked it. There is a potent combination of deep emotions, drama, tension, angst, inner turmoil and heat flowing across the pages and that made for a very engaging read. I found Hugo and Brand easy to like and root for. The challenges and the adversaries that they faced were realistic and relatable. There's an elaborate back and forth dance between these two that on the one hand I understood and on the other I felt it just got too annoying, because they were locked in that holding pattern and spinning their wheels forever. That was the one big issue I had with this romance. It was pretty much all about the getting there and hardly any of them just being a real couple, and for me that was a bit of a letdown. I am independently posting an impartial review.