Reviewed by Stephen K.

TITLE: Down Low

SERIES: Down Home #1

AUTHOR: Parker St. John

PUBLISHER: Self published

LENGTH: 249 pages

RELEASE DATE: September 28^th 2020

BLURB:

His broken bones could finally mend their broken bond…

Bull riding was the only thing that calmed the thrill-seeking, self-destructive beast inside of Calvin Craig. It allowed him to escape a small-minded town and the pain of his troubled youth, fleeing to bright lights and big city fame without looking back.

One trip on the horns of the wrong bull changed everything.

Cal is forced to come crawling back home for the first time in ten years, his body broken and riding days behind him. But not everyone is happy for the return of their local celebrity.

Eli Jackson was once the tall, dark, and sinful preacher’s son who had Cal wrapped around his little finger. Now the steely-eyed sheriff of Sweetwater, Eli is hell bent on running him right back out of town. He’s never forgiven Cal for the spectacular implosion of their relationship. Even though the lingering tension soon has them burning up the sheets, he refuses to be tamed.

Cal is surprised to find himself rising to a new challenge: breaking the bull that is Eli Jackson.

He might have run out of luck, but he’s not out of miracles… yet.

REVIEW:

Waylon & Willie warned us “Mammas, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys.” This book shows us why. It also provides us a table of contents that could be used as a country & Western playlist. Country Roads Take Me Home, You’ve Got to Stand for Something, Small Town USA, Empty Saddles, and on & on. Though she missed one that really applies… Much Too Young To Feel This Damn Old.

This book is told from the POV of Cal, a bull rider, who left his small town as an angry young man to join the circus. No make that the rodeo. Now, more than a decade later, sadder but no wiser, his “best days are gone.” He’s had some success, and more than his share of injuries, and he’s heading home — broken and broke in more ways than one.  Each cowboy has “his own brand of misery.” In Cal’s case, his misery started young. His parents were killed in a car crash and he and his younger sister went to live with their only kin, an uncle who was physically abusive to trouble-making Cal.

Adding to the young man’s anger was his love for the firmly closeted, Eli, “son of a preacher man,” but that was more than a decade ago, and Cal, a “modern day drifter”, hasn’t spoken to Eli in all that time. Nor to his sister in at least five years – since he refused to return home to attend his uncle’s funeral.

This is not your typical cowboy themed M/M romance. It barely qualifies as a slow burn, more like a fire that no one lights and both piss on a bit. Several other reviewers have rated this pretty low and at points it does feel like Cal is hitting bottom.

But as a child of the 50s, “I grew up dreamin of being a cowboy,” and Cal “ain’t wrong; he’s just different.” If you’ve got the taste for “a sad country song”, and can stand a narrator who’s “sadly in search of his slow-movin dreams” this book is worth hanging in there for. Wisdom does finally dawn, and there is a HEA of sorts, or at least as happy as any old cowboy would expect.

Yes, “my heroes have always been cowboys , and they still are it seems.”

RATING:

BUY LINKS:

Amazon