Reviewed by Vicki
TITLE: Karma 
SERIES: Cattle Valley #33
AUTHOR: Carol Lynne
PUBLISHER: Pride Publishing
LENGTH: 88 pages
RELEASE DATE: April 26th, 2016
BLURB:
From an Olympic Gold Medalist to jail inmate, one man’s journey to rebuild his life after hitting rock bottom.
Once a celebrated athlete, Guy Hoisington fell from grace and into a bottle. For years, the citizens of Cattle Valley went out of their way to avoid the drunk lecher, but one man, Shane Rendell, not only dated Guy during a brief period of relative sobriety but fell in love with him before he was hastily cast aside.
Living within the thick haze of liquor and sex, Guy rarely made good decisions, but on one particular dark night, he makes the worst decision of his life when he decides to drive down the mountain after a long evening of drinking. He wakes from a coma to discover he’s run an innocent man off the road and has a life-changing injury. For the first time in a very long time, Guy is able to look at himself through sober eyes, and he hates the man in the mirror. In one stupid move, he’s lost everything.
Shane has tried for two years to move on with his life after falling for the town alcoholic, but when he learns of Guy’s accident, he rushes to the hospital. Although the entire town may hate Guy, Shane is determined to prove Guy hasn’t lost everything.
Pre-Order Date: 15th March 2016
Available Exclusively to Pride Publishing: 29th March 2016
General Release Date: 26th April 2016
REVIEW:
For those of you not familiar with this series, Cattle Valley is a small town in Wyoming populated by gay and lesbian people, started by a rich man in honor of his son. We have followed all sorts of characters in the last 32 books, now in the 33rd book we get a redemption story. Guy has been the asshole character hanging over the town for many years, he’s the resident alcoholic, a sports star, and owner of a big lodge just out of town. He’s managed to destroy his own life quite nicely in one night of bad decisions. Guy and his on again, mostly off again fuck buddy, Shane, had a bad fight, Shane took off, Guy followed. Drunk off his ass. He causes an accident that nearly kills him and another man. Shane feels guilty and responsible for the accident, and heads to the hospital to help Guy. He ends up paying Guys hospital bill and sits beside his bed waiting for him to wake up. Guy does eventually wake up to discover he has really messed things up. He’s permanently damaged himself, physically and financially. He ends up very reluctantly signing part of his lodge over to Shane, who offers to handle his finances for him while he’s in jail. Guy is an absolute asshole to Shane, who STILL offers to help him.
Guy gets out of jail and the two try to figure out how to make a relationship work, initially a professional relationship only.
Writing a believable redemption story is a very hard thing to do, and this one is only partially successful. The problem is, the author has to create a character that needs to be redeemed, who we hate, then transition him through his redemption into someone we love. Unfortunately I so hated Guy that I was never able to get to the point that I liked him, much less loved him. He’s just an awful man. He’s horrible to Shane in particular, and I have no idea why Shane would have anything to do with him. I had a very hard time understanding their relationship, and why Shane would have any desire to be with such a nasty man. I could see the process he was going through, maybe if the book had been longer and he’d had to work harder to get Shane, I would have gotten him. I didn’t even see that he wanted to be with Shane, or why Shane wanted to be with him. The connection between them wasn’t visible enough for me.
So I liked this book, but didn’t love it… I got what Carol was trying to do, I liked the basic plot, and I love CV. It was hard for me to really understand the relationship between the two main characters, but I did see Guys redemption. A bit too little to late for me, but I see where it was going. I loved seeing some of the other residents popping up, and I liked how they interacted with Shane and Guy. I love the concept of this town, and series, and hope we get more of these books, or more set in Lobster Cove, the spin off series. This wasn’t my favorite of the series, but I still liked it and will read more in the future!
RATING: 
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