Publishers Weekly
02/21/2022
Fox (Undercover K-9 Cowboy) launches her Rustlers Creek series with this bittersweet treat. Hadley Wayne is TV’s Cowgirl Gourmet, a down-home Montana girl with a handsome cowboy husband and a flourishing culinary empire. But underneath all the glitz and glam is a deep pain: the memory of Jessica, the daughter she and Zack lost to a late-term miscarriage two years earlier. Since the loss, both Hadley and Zack have tried to push their pain aside, but all it’s done is push them further apart. When Hadley and Zack’s childless state becomes a national conversation, and events start dropping Hadley based on her proclamation that she no longer wants children, the pair are forced to deal with the elephant in the room. Can they find a way to move forward or is their marriage over? Despite the heavy topic, Fox keeps the pacing brisk, with an unpredictably twisting plot. The achingly real characters and their plausible conflicts make it easy for readers to sympathize with both husband and wife, and cheer for them to find a way back to happily ever after, whether that’s together or apart. Few readers will come out of this dry-eyed. Agent: Holly Root, Root Literary. (Apr.)
From the Publisher
"Fox launches her Rustlers Creek series with this bittersweet treat... The achingly real characters and their plausible conflicts make it easy for readers to sympathize with both husband and wife, and cheer for them to find a way back to happily ever after, whether that’s together or apart. Few readers will come out of this dry-eyed." — Publishers Weekly
Kirkus Reviews
2022-03-02
A celebrity couple attempts to get their unhappy marriage back on track.
Hadley Wayne has deep roots in the small Montana town of Rustlers Creek: It’s where she grew up, it’s where she met and married her husband, Zack, and now it’s where she hosts her popular Cooking Network show, The Cowgirl Gourmet. The show is successful beyond her wildest dreams, turning her into a household name and catapulting her and her husband and their ranch into the spotlight. It’s not that Zack resents Hadley’s success, but he feels a deepening chasm growing between them every day. They're both afraid their marriage is unraveling, but the lines of communication are completely down, and they're unable to fix what is wrong. When a business trip sends them to California, Hadley and Zack both hope that time away from the ranch will help them reconnect. Fox’s novel is full of angst and melodrama, with two other secondary romance plots: Zack’s parents experience marital difficulties, and Hadley’s producer falls in love with one of the cowboys on the ranch. Unfortunately, these subplots just serve to highlight the lack of progress between Hadley and Zack. Their emotional reactions, especially at the beginning, feel manufactured to create melodrama. The plot meanders for most of the book before scrambling to an unsatisfying and rushed conclusion.
This frustrating take on the “marriage in trouble” trope fails to deliver a convincing happily-ever-after.
