This RITA® Reader Challenge 2013 review was written by Emma. This story was nominated for the RITA® in the Best Historical Romance category.

The summary:     

Cathleen Chase is no killer—but as Cat O’Banyon, she is a ruthless bounty hunter who always gets her man. Catching one lowlife after another, she continues her search for the only man she really cares to locate. The one whose voice she will never forget; the man who murdered her husband. She’ll stop at nothing to find him.  

Con artist Alexi Romanov taught Cat every trick she knows.  He is a master of deceit, disguise, and desire. He’s difficult to trust, and even more difficult to resist, but he has news she can’t ignore. The man she’s after has placed a bounty on her head.

To get him before he gets her, she’ll have to team up with Alexi again….And just like before, the two of them together are nothing but trouble.

And here is Emma's review:

There were a lot of things that I liked about this book. Cat, the bounty-hunting heroine, is quick-witted, resourceful and appropriately tough to still be alive after 12 months of hunting criminals.

Alexi, her ex-lover, is a smooth-talking con-man and a perfect match for her (even if it takes her a while to realise it). They're both characters with hidden vulnerabilities and Dark Pasts who, by the end of the book, I could definitely see enjoying their well-deserved HEA.

However, there were two things that kept cropping up that made it hard for me to take the story as seriously as perhaps I should. Firstly, Alexi suffers from a strong case of Manly Perfection. Not only is he continually described as super-handsome (I think he's the 'beauty' of the title), he also somehow “…no matter the mud or the heat or the filth…managed to smell as if he'd just danced in a rainstorm.” In the Wild West. In the 1800s. His passion for cleanliness is explained as arising from the experiences of his Dark Past, but still, I had a hard time figuring out where he was finding the time for his grooming routine.

Secondly, Cat possesses what I can only describe as hypno-breasts, which she frequently uses to escape dangerous situations. For example:

Cat's gaze stayed on the three men. Theirs were fixed unwaveringly on her breasts. They hadn't even noticed yet that Alexi was gone.

Cat let them stare to the count of ten. Then she gathered the tattered remains of her gown and shouted: “There he goes! Cat O'Banyon.” She pointed at the window, hand shaking, lips trembling. “He broke in here. He hit that man. Said he'd take him in dead or alive.”

The spell of her breasts broken, the three hunters blinked.

This sort of thing happens all the time. By about the middle of the book I started thinking that she had the hypno-toad under her blouse. 

These minor grips aside I enjoyed the book. I found the Wild West setting believable, the characters three-dimensional and the plot zips along nicely. I give it a solid B.

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This book is available from Goodreads | Amazon | BN | Kobo | iBooks | All Romance eBooks – and is currently on sale digitally for $2.99.