Bounty by Kristen Ashley – B-/C+ As I usually do, I pre-ordered the latest Kristen Ashley release and started reading it soon after it landed on my reader. And, as I usually do, I enjoyed the book – mostly. Justice Lonesome is the daughter and granddaughter of rock royalty, a talented musician in her own right. She buys an unfinished house near Carnal in Colorado (exactly how and why she came to choose Carnal is never made clear) and starts to settle in. Her beloved father, Johnny Lonesome, died suddenly some months before and Justice is still grieving. Deke Hightower is a contractor for Holden Maxwell’s house-building business and arrives to start work on finishing Justice’s new place.

As it happens, Justice and Deke had met one night some years before and made a connection. Circumstances intervened and their potential wasn’t realised – Justice always wondered “what if” though. It’s clear to Deke that Justice is a wealthy woman and, because of his personal history, he’s reluctant to act on his attraction to her. In his experience, rich women are bad for him in many ways. Besides all that, he can’t see how they’d fit together. Deke is a restless soul – he travels about half the year and comes home to Carnal the other time, to do some work for Max and make enough money to go travelling again. How could Justice fit in with that kind of lifestyle? How could it ever work?

The heart of the story is actually very sweet and enjoyable but Deke and Justice sort out most of their issues fairly quickly and the second half of the book dragged a little. There is also a lot (and I mean Nora-Roberts’-Inn-Boonsboro-series-level a lot) of house renovation and plenty of family drama for Justice, both of which became a little tiresome after a while. I have a fairly high tolerance for Kristen Ashley-style detail but at the point where the new couches went in I was about done with my appreciation of Justice’s colour/texture combinations. I thought the drama at the end was a bit manufactured, coming out of nowhere as it did. I did, however, enjoy catching up with the other characters from previous books in this series and particularly enjoyed the friendship between Justice and Krys.

The drama at about the 1/3 mark, which is the catalyst for Deke “getting his head outta his ass” made my heart beat too fast and had me holding my breath, worried for Justice. And, then when Deke got to her, I was all aswoon. I am a complete sucker for that kind of trope. Can’t help it. That said, the Bianca storyline kind of fizzled out so it felt, in the end, that it was only there to serve the purpose of getting Deke’s head out of his butt and not to be an actual plot of the story.

It certainly wasn’t a waste of my time – although it did take me longer to read than is usually the case with an Ashley book – told you the second half dragged – but it also wasn’t as coherent a book as some of my favourites. I liked Deke and Justice together a lot. But I think I’d have appreciated them a lot more had the book been edited much more tightly.

BUY IT:
AMAZON     KOBO

Reviews of these books will be up soon at AudioGals.