Big Bad Cowboy (Once Upon A Time In Texas #1) by Carly Bloom

My Review - 4.5 Stars

Carly Bloom has a fan in me. I absolutely inhaled her debut Big Bad Cowboy! It is a supremely delicious ride with a deft sense of humor that manages to subvert the cowboy trope.

Travis and Maggie meet at a Halloween party (dressed as Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf!) and don't realize they're business rivals until after sexy shenanigans have ensued. Talk about a delicious premise!

To take things up a notch: Travis figures out Maggie was his Little Red Riding Hood but doesn’t tell her he was the Big Bad Wolf. Thanks to Maggie’s best friend, they have each other’s phone number and so Little Red and her Wolf text (or sext, as it were) on the side while Travis and Maggie are getting to know each other better each day.

I don’t always like situations like this. You know it’s going to end badly and it’s just a matter of when but Bloom handled this beautifully. I was caught up in Travis’s angst over potentially losing Maggie just as she’d warmed up to him.

I also really liked how the story examined identity and the roles we play. When Travis and Maggie meet at the Halloween party, Maggie has just been friend-zoned by her best friend JD and she’s tired of the men in town never viewing her in a romantic light, while Travis is back in Big Verde after many years away and doesn’t want people to look down on him (because of his family) the way they used to. They’re both happy to hide, so to speak, behind their costumes. It also gives them a chance to discover another side to their respective personalities. (Maggie is more bold and takes a risk; Travis’s more dominant side emerges in the bedroom and it is hot.) Neither of them wants to relinquish this discovery and so it’s understandable Travis wouldn’t want to tell Maggie that he’s her Big Bad Wolf.

They were so good together! Their relationship developed naturally, even with the threat of Travis moving away hanging over them. They had such good chemistry.

There’s such great character growth across the story. Travis has to stop ignoring his problems. I loved watching him take care of his nephew and the way he figured out what kind of future he wanted to have. As a female landscape architect, Maggie constantly has to prove herself in a male-dominated field and I loved how the story explored this dynamic. She’s always been seen as “one of the guys” and I loved watching her bloom under Travis’s attention.

Cowboy romances can feature a whole lot of toxic masculinity and dressed up white supremacy. (Not all of them do- Beverly Jenkins is one welcome example.) Big Verde has a Latinx population and characters are integrated into the plot, particularly with the inclusion of Mrs. Garza who takes care of Henry and Travis by extension. There’s also an LGBTQ subplot that’s handled well, although it did get a bit heavy-handed with the stereotypes. Still, the message was clear: love is love.

Travis is a different kind of hero from the cowboys of yore: he doesn’t want to be like his father or brother, he looks out for the people in his life, he’s determined to be a good role model for his nephew. He doesn’t always get it right but he keeps trying. Through his efforts and as he reconnects to the community, he starts to realize his childhood dream of being a cowboy could become reality and I loved how this developed throughout the story.

This was an absolute delight from start to finish! Bloom writes with such humor and care. I’ll be reading the next book in this series for sure!

I read this while cat-sitting over the weekend. All I can say is Bluegrass didn’t snuggle up with me while I was reading a domestic suspense novel. 😉  

Synopsis

In the New York Times tradition of Lori Wilde and Carolyn Brown comes the first book in a new western romance series from Forever debut author Carly Bloom about a no-strings cowboy fling with a fairy tale twist.

Who's afraid of the big, bad cowboy? 

After one too many heartbreaks, Travis Blake hung up his cowboy hat and put Big Verde, Texas, behind him. But when he gets the call that his young nephew needs him, he knows he has to return home. His plan is to sell the family ranch and hightail it back to Austin, but there's a small problem: the one person who stands in his way is the one person he can't resist.

Maggie is pretty sure she hates Travis Blake. He's irritating, he's destroying her business, and . . . and he's just so frickin' attractive. But when they're forced to work together, Maggie discovers that the Most Annoying Man in the World is more than he seems. He's sweet with his nephew, he helps out in the community, and he makes her heart flutter. Maggie doesn't want to risk everything on a man who wants to leave, but what if she can convince this wayward cowboy to stay?

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Disclosure: I received an advance copy from Forever Romance in exchange for an honest review. Affiliate links included in this post