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B

Genre: Contemporary Romance, Romance

This RITA® Reader Challenge 2015 review was written by Kate KF. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Mid-Length Contemporary category.

The summary:

Melody Spencer had long-ago wiped the dust of Cupid, Texas, off her cute shoes . . . and done her best to forget the chiseled jaw and strong arms of cowboy Luke Spencer. Their families might be part of a long-time feud, but he was her very first love, even if it turned out they never wanted the same things.

But now Luke’s come striding back into her life, tempting her with the memories of long, lazy evenings and hot, passionate kisses. And he has an ulterior motive—as Mayor of Cupid, he knows Melody’s business savvy can help save their beloved hometown. His smooth talking might get her to Texas, but that doesn’t mean he’ll get her in his bed. Still, people do say love can be more perfect the second time around…

Here is Kate K.F.'s review:

Love with a Perfect Cowboy started off like a great movie or TV show opening, Melody, who’s left behind her small town life in Texas is having the worst day ever in New York City. She loses her job, her boyfriend tosses her out but she happens to meet Luke, the handsome cowboy that she was in love with as a teenager. Their relationship was rocky for reasons we learn later, but in New York City he takes her out to dinner, gives her back her confidence and they have a night of hot sex. I was hooked from this beginning because there was banter, history, and characters I wanted to know.

Luke had me interested as he’s the mayor of Cupid, Texas and came all the way to New York City where he stands out to convince Melody to come back with him to use her marketing skills to help the town recover from a horrible drought. The moment when Melody decided yes, she would go and then driving from the airport to Cupid and seeing the drought devastation was beautiful and powerful. After that, the book started to sink a bit for me which was a shame as I wanted to like it. I love cowboys and the banter and set up of Cupid with the small town feel made me think of Gilmore Girls, but all the pieces didn’t fully fit.

Melody and Luke have their odd sex-only relationship as they try and help the town, there’s this major feud that wrecked both their lives and lots of of history, tons of great secondary characters, but I wasn’t completely invested. I think the issue was that their relationship was mainly either banter or arguments as they help the town or sex that seemed dreamy; there were too many perfect romantic settings and not enough mess or laughter.

At the end, I believed in their HEA and even the town’s happy ending, but I would have liked to see more of the work and mess. Also the very last HEA for the town seemed a little bit too pat as an awful occurrence mends fences. My end grade is a B since the writing was wonderful, and there were good characters and a great setting, but it didn’t fully gel for me. I think I would read another Lori Wilde but I think Kat Latham might be more my style in terms of contemporaries.