Title:  Reckless in Texas
Series:  Texas Rodeo #1
Author:  Kari Lynn Dell
Genre:  Contemporary Romance, Cowboy Romance
Published:  August 2, 2016
Publisher:  Sourcebooks Casablanca
My Rating:  4 stars
Source:  NetGalley
Cover Description:

Violet Jacobs is fearless. At least, that’s what the cowboys she snatches from under the hooves of bucking horses think. Outside the ring, she’s got plenty of worries rattling her bones: her young son, her mess of a love life, and lately, her family’s struggling rodeo. When she takes business into her own hands and hires on a hotshot bullfighter, she expects to start a ruckus. She never expected Joe Cassidy. Rough and tumble, cocky and charming, Joe’s everything a superstar should be-and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out he’s way out of Violet’s league.

Joe came to Texas to escape a life spiraling out of control. He never planned on sticking around, and he certainly never expected to call this dry and dusty backwater home. But Violet is everything he never knew he was missing, and the deeper he’s pulled into her beautiful mess of a family, the more he realizes this fierce rodeo girl may be offering him the one thing he never could find on his own.

Read on for my thoughts on Reckless in Texas.  No true spoilers, promise.

Sometimes that perfect person for you comes along and we’re too stubborn or too afraid to take the risk.  Oh, we might be willing to have a quick fling, but a deeper relationship… no, no that’s asking too much from where we stand with our own issues.  This is where Violet and Joe stand at their very beginning.  Prickly as a cactus and stubborn as mules.  Yeah.  That about covers them.

Violet has a full plate in front of her – single mom, managing the family rodeo as well as the stock business and perhaps the most important work of “pickup man” for the cowboys in the arena.  She’s strong, feisty and definitely not looking for a long term man in her life, on that she’s definitely skittish.   Joe picked up this contract as purely temporary, his goals lie somewhere else and the last thing he’s looking for is a woman who deserves a commitment that he simply cannot give.  Now if she’d say yes to a fling as temporary as his contract, Joe’d be right on that – but more, no he’s not cut out to be that cowboy.

Reckless in Texas definitely falls into the enemies to lovers category.  These two would win the prize for rubbing each other the totally wrong way.  At times when there’s that much tension on the surface, something far different is brewing underneath.  I enjoyed the tension between Violet and Joe, a very definite hot sexual tension as well.  Slowly they’ll begin to break down walls and change opinions about each other.  The romantic cowboy surfaces and he sure does fine in that department.  She’s been in bad relationships and is so afraid to believe in something too good to be true – but she wants to and that risk may be worth it.  Of course, misunderstandings and conflict are going to get in the way.  And Joe is going to have to make a decision on what is more important, a lifelong goal or the woman who sets his heart on fire.

There’s a good, solid bit of world building in this first of the series, enough to make the behind the scenes of the rodeo more exciting and far more dangerous than the average fan sitting in the bleachers will ever understand.  Full of lively secondary characters, who will hopefully have their own time in the spotlight, Reckless in Texas is creating a world that readers will want to visit again and again.

*I received an e-ARC of Reckless in Texas from the publisher, Sourcebooks Casablanca and NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. That does not change what I think of this novel.*

Available in paperback and for the Kindle