Reviewed by Louisa
TITLE: Barbed Wire Cowboy
AUTHOR: Renee Stevens
PUBLISHER: Self Published
LENGTH: 362 Pages
RELEASE DATE: April 6th 2017
BLURB:
After having been kicked off the family ranch by his father, Marc Poulson has made a new home for himself as the foreman of the Double R Ranch. His fellow ranch hands are his family, but he’s still not complete without Casey Morgan, his counterpart at the neighboring Del Rio Ranch. In the middle of a feud with his one-time best friend, Marc struggles to understand why Casey would rather take a swing at him than talk to him. He wants to put the past behind them and rebuild what they once had and make their relationship stronger than ever, but Casey is having none of it.
Casey has his own demons to deal with, and Marc serves as a reminder to things he’d rather forget. Casey can’t see beyond the past and continues to make mistakes that put both him and Marc in harms way. After one close call too many, Casey must decide whether his past is more important than his future, or if he can live with Marc walking out of his life—possibly forever.
REVIEW:
Barbed Wire Cowboy by Renee Stevens is an engaging book that tackles some very relevant incidents. We meet Marc Poulson the foreman of the Double R Ranch and neighbouring Del Rio Ranch foreman Casey Morgan. These two man are best friends until they are enemies overnight.
The story develops from the point of the two men fighting with each other and we slowly learn the background. This was a really good way to tell the story. It meant that the story was always moving forward.
I feel like the story with Marc’s family is a little unfinished. Everything is resolved – but I guess for me, I would have liked to see a bit more emotion about his mother. Learning more about his family was good from an enjoyment perspective, especially when it comes to his brother. Their relationship is good, because it isn’t perfect, but very normal.
The secondary characters are strong and enjoyable. I spent the whole book wondering if there was something more between the two ranch owners. But that may just have been my over active imagination. But this book does lack females. And while I know that ranching is a very male dominated world, there were no females who had any real page time. It’s not necessarily a negative, just an observation.
The thing I liked most about Barbed Wire Cowboy, is that it dealt with several realistic issues. Coming out being a major one. It wasn’t sugar coated for us. And Marc tells Casey that there are no guarantees when it comes to be open about who you are. This really made the story for me. The understanding that being open, out and proud isn’t always easy and sometimes it shoves you out the door all on your own. Building a family of choice was also very positive. I don’t want to spoil anything for the book, so I will simply say that I was really impressed with how sensitive topics were discussed in the story.
So, if you like cowboys, horses and some obstacles on the way to happiness, this is the book for you.
RATING: 
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