Reviewed by Sadonna
TITLE: Gone Country: A Central Texas MM Romance
SERIES: Central Texas #3
AUTHOR: Kelly Fox
PUBLISHER: Self-published
LENGTH: 298 Pages
RELEASE DATE: April 16, 2025
BLURB:
I kissed a man. While drunk on mezcal. This is fine.
You don’t hafta tell me how lucky I am—I’ve got a thriving dude ranch, a growing empire, and a son who keeps me grounded. Sure, my land manager and my ex-wife won’t stop nagging me about my busted knee, but I can handle a little pain.
What I can’t handle? This inconvenient attraction to my new friend. My new male friend.
Skylar—who, thankfully, left his sugar baby days behind—is launching a mobile orthopedic practice out here in the Texas Hill Country. I offered to help because I’m a good guy and a sharp businessman. Not because he’s gorgeous, funny, and the only person who can get me to admit my knee is an absolute disaster.
It gets a whole lot harder to lie to myself after I kiss him. Because that wasn’t just the mezcal talkin’.
Now, I can’t stop thinking about him—or wishing we’d gone further—and my “straight” identity is looking more questionable by the second.
I can handle multiple businesses, interfering employees, and the occasional runaway giraffe. But falling for a man? That might just be the thing that cracks my once rigid exterior.
Gone Country is a friends-to-lovers, existential crisis romance featuring a stubborn cowboy with a failing grip on his “straight” identity, the flirty nurse practitioner he can’t stop thinking about, and a well-meaning friend who picks the worst possible moment to walk in.
REVIEW:
Skylar Whitmore is an nurse practitioner specializing in orthopedics. He’s worked PRN for a doc in Austin. He’s also a sugar baby. He’s looked at the knee of dude ranch owner Kit Baker as it’s gotten nothing but worse. The pain has brought Kit to his back more than once. In fact, he’s thrown up from the pain. So when it gets particularly bad one night, he promises his son Reed that he will reach out to Sky.
Sky comes over and Kit’s pain is so bad he can’t get his boots off to get his jeans off to have Sky examine the knee. So he takes a few shows of Mezcal and it s bit tipsy. After Sky checks him out Kit kisses him. Like really kisses him. He’s always enjoyed looking at the beautiful femme Sky with his makeup and nails and heels and gorgeous clothes, but he’s never ever even though about kissing a man before. Oops.
They agree to chalk it up to the liquor. Except that Kit cannot get that kiss out of his mind. And now he is thinking about more than kissing. With a man. Say wha-what??? When he sees Sky at a birthday party days later, Sky tells him that he has left his sugar baby days behind and he’s working on a new plan for his life Kit of course offers to help in any way he can to get Sky anything he needs to move on with his life. This includes helping him get a new vehicle, recommend his services to other stubborn cowboys and basically check in on him. But he still wants to kiss him 😉
But Kit is straight. Isn’t he? He was married to his best friend for years before she came out to him. He was devastated because he had no idea she wasn’t happy with their life. He was hurt when she moved on with her wife. But they’ve mad it work and he’s so happy that she’s in his life and that their family is working. He’s really confused.
Kit has another cowboy that needs medical attention and colludes with said cowboy’s husband to get Sky access to him. They end up meeting old and new friends at a surprise breakfast at another area ranch. There Kit runs into an old friend from his rodeo days. A gay cowboy who was outed after being injured. So he thinks maybe this is someone he can talk to. So he does.
When he acts on his feelings though Kit gets more than he’s bargained for. He’s freaked out that he didn’t know this about himself and here he is a grown man with a grown son and he’s just discovered he is attracted to a man?? And then someone barges in on them. Freak out mode activated 🙁 It’s gonna take some time for these two to figure out if there is a path forward for them.
Oh man I just loved this story! First Sky is a sweetheart 🙂 He’s a strong character – having made his own way despite being rejected by his family and left without much. He’s finally decided he is worth more than he’s giving himself credit for. Kit doesn’t know what hit him. He’s felt something for Skylar since first meeting him that he can’t put his finger on. But after that kiss – well, his thinking goes in a whole other direction 😉 He has no idea what is going on with him. He’s a little freaked out by it. Sky is patient and kind with him. Plus Sky is determined to make Kit deal with his busted up knee, come hell or high water. He just didn’t bargain on Kit the man making him feel some type of way that he wasn’t sure what to do about. Kit make plenty of missteps – mostly out of surprise and a little bit of fear and even some misguided thoughts that he’s an idiot for not knowing that a man could even be an option for him. Sky is not to be trifled with though. He’s let enough people in who didn’t deserve him and he’s not going to do it again. Luckily between his friends, Kit’s ex and an old friend that Kit hasn’t seen in a while, these two start on the road to something real. There are definitely a number of bumps in the road, but Kit is coming from a good place. I also loved seeing the guys from Rebel Sky Ranch series and the couples from the Lost Boys series show up in important cameo roles here 🙂 Sky had his village and so did Kit – without them evening know it 🙂 I also adored Reed, Kit and Cynthia’s mostly nonverbal son and his girlfriend McKenzie 🙂 Cynthia and her wife Brandy were also there for these two when they needed it. Rowdy and Kess and Woody and Emery and Stevie and Dawn are all along for the ride as well. All in all, this might be my favorite of the series. This view into the lives and loves of these folks are so needed right now. Highly recommended.
RATING: 
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