Marcella Bell

3.5 stars

I received this book for free, this does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

“I need you to cowboy up.”

It's the second season of the reality show Closed Circuit and after A.J. and Lil (The Wildest Ride) saved the inner city rodeo program CityBoyz by getting it's accounts back in the black, Diablo Sosa doesn't quite understand why founder Henry “Old Man” Bowman wants him to compete. Henry claims with all the new money, they need more recruits and Diablo competing will give them the attention they need. After Henry was a pseudo father to him and saved him when he was thirteen from going to jail, Diablo will do anything for him. Taking a sabbatical from his job as a lawyer, Diablo is going back to the rodeo, something he hasn't done in fourteen years.

It was a smile filled with the unspoken promise that, should they ever find themselves in intimate settings, he wouldn't be gentle and that she wouldn't want him to be.

Sierra Quintanilla is the host of Closed Circuit and in her late twenties, knows what it takes and how to stay at the top as The Rodeo Queen. She must be glam and look beautiful at all times, always act like a lady in public, and never consort with the cowboys. The restrictions at times chafe but her love of horses keeps her in the game. She's never been tempted before but when Diablo comes on the scene, she's suddenly ready to risk and question what she really wants out of life.

No one had ever called her beautiful when she wasn't trying to be.

The Rodeo Queen read a lot like the first in the series (you could start here but the first was so good you should go back and read it), the author gives us a complete story with fully fleshed out characters. I love how this author tells a story but I will say the romance isn't always the star of the show for me. Sierra's working out of what she really wants out of life and questioning if she wants to take a chance/risk with Diablo was a lot of her character's story, not so much the actionable falling in love. There's a lot of time spent in the characters heads as they emotionally wrestle with working out decisions. Diablo struggles with past pain of having romantic partners wanting to hide their relationship with him because he's Black and Latine. So, with Sierra being the host of the show he's on and having a sort of morality clause in her contract and Diablo not wanting to feel like a dirty little secret, you can see where the angst springs from.

Just how far was she willing to push the boundaries of rodeo queen propriety?

The rodeo competition, mostly, stays in the background (there was one scene that in reversal, had me thinking it went too long), except for a villain plot involving a contestant jealous over not being able to be as good as Diablo and another older contestant, Julio. Diablo's life experience taught him to recognize and prepare for what such attitudes can do and we get a tense scene, that also opens Sierra's eyes to ways Diablo could be feeling, as while Sierra is Cuban herself, her lived experience is different than Diablo's. It's a way that the author gives the characters multiple layers and they feel like fully fleshed out beings. While there were some side characters and A.J., Lil, and Henry from book one make appearances, this was almost all Sierra and Diablo's story.

She wanted the mess and the risk of going all the way with him or she wanted to leave him alone.

The story only takes place over a two month period but as we spend a good amount of time in the main character's heads, I felt like I really knew them and on the handful of dates they go on, these two really talked and I could see why they would feel an attraction to one another. It's something that I can struggle with in romance as I feel like things are rushed but while I could read the emotion, the actionable I was talking about felt absent as we were in their heads a lot. Because of Sierra's job, these two had some go and stop moments, stopped by Diablo as he didn't want Sierra to regret anything, before we get our open door (beach) scenes.

And he wanted her.
And she wanted him, more than she'd wanted any other person in her life.

Then ending had Sierra not stepping up when Diablo wanted her to and we get a third act breakup that leads into a personal tragedy for Diablo that has him stepping away from the competition for awhile, giving Sierra time to decide ultimately what she wants out of life. While the personal tragedy was sad for Diablo, the character's relationship with him was too periphery and we don't get to really know the character for me to feel the deep emotional hit and then it's rushed at the end. But, it did give a chance for Diablo's found/chosen family to come together, along with Sierra, to give a sweet heartfelt scene. The characters didn't get out of their heads enough for me to feel the romance was front and center and the ending felt more like the start to a happily ever after, instead of a wrap-up to one. Overall, this was a grounded, slow burn love, great story that had characters with multiple deep layers that will have them lingering in your mind long after you put the book down.

And because this line has the Garth Brooks' song stuck in my head now,
Tomorrow would be for bulls and blood and dust and mud [...]

And they call the thing rodeo(!)… (más)

3.5 stars

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Tearing folks from their history was one of the ways to break them, so Lil's family had held on to theirs through their land---through cultural hostility, the dust bowl, outright deception, attempts to steal, and everything else that time and life had thrown their way.

After her granddad dies, Lilian Sorrow Island learns that he took out a reverse mortgage on their ranch, Swallowtail, and now that the bereavement period is over, they need to start making payments on the 1.2 million dollar loan. The ranch is barely getting by but her grandma has a plan, have Lil compete in the new PBRA Close Circuit tour, a reality tv rodeo, tournament style, two month competition that will award the all around winner 1 million dollars. Lil competed in the INFR and always dreamed of riding bulls in the PBR but they wouldn't accept women at the time. This is a chance to save her ranch and live out her dream.

Huge, rough, layered, and callused, they were the hands of a man who let go of something only when he was ready to.

The PBRA's most decorated cowboy, AJ Garza, has been on a retirement tour around the world for the last three years. When he learns the organization, CityBoyz, that took him in as a troubled youth, headed by Henry “The Old Man” and one of the best black cowboys to compete in the PBRA, lost their biggest donor and needs money, he decides to come out of retirement and enter the closed circuit tour to win the prize money for them. Not knowing what to do with his life after rodeo, it's the perfect opportunity to stay in the game. After he watches the new guy, Lil Sorrow, get the highest score on the first competition of bronc riding, he's excited for the first real competition he's had in years. When the new guy turns out to be a woman, AJ finds himself drawn for a new reason.

She needed to take herself in hand. She had strict rules, both about rodeo cowboys and mixing work with pleasure, and all of them could be summed up in one word: no.

The Wildest Ride, is first in debut author Marcella Bell's Closed Circuit series and had the a love letter to the west feel of a Beverly Jenkins and the family and friends cast of characters and sexy loving moments of a Lori Foster. The setting and elements of rodeo are truly the fabric that becomes the backbone to the story, especially in the beginning. It's not really until 35% that the romance kicks in between Lil and AJ but I loved how the rodeo/ranching elements gave the story an overall stripped down feel.

Lil has lived the majority of her life on the ranch, raised by her grandparents after her teenage mom refused to name the cowboy who got her pregnant and then ends up dying when Lil is four years old. The pain of feeling abandoned has made her develop trust issues, especially with men. Her grandma and the other two who help on the ranch, cousin Tommy and ranch hand Piper, are the only people she lets in. Lil is our grumpy and AJ is our sunshine. AJ grew-up in Houston and after his father died, he had anger issues that had his mom sending him to CityBoyz, an inner city youth program, there he learned a love for rodeo and a natural talent for it. He's thirty-six to Lil's twenty-seven and has vast experience in dealing with the press and whole song and dance involved with a reality tv show. Lil grew-up watching AJ and had a crush on him but she's the real rancher to his “city boy” and AJ still has some things to learn in that arena. They constantly are neck and neck in the competitions, keeping them aware of each other.

She sighed in his ear, whispering back, willing to be open and soft in another language, “Apurate, vaquero, he estado esperandote a toda mi vida.”

The closed circuit tournament worked to keep these two together but pace of the competition felt a little disjointed at times. The competition isn't the main focus, it intermittently gets focused on and for it being the glue that holds our couple together, it never fully fit right for me. What I did enjoy a lot was how easy, sweet, and sexily taunting AJ could be with Lil and how her grumpiness delighted and egged him on. Lil's tough but AJ teasingly coaxing her out of her cocoon created some sweet scenes. There's not a ton of bedroom scenes but the author takes her time when they are there and I found them all the better for it, more of that stripped down feeling.

He took a step closer and she tilted her chin up to keep eye contact. “Stop this foolishness,” he said. “Take me home with you.”
Something sharp and scared flashed through her eyes but was gone in an instant. “You won't stay.”
He leaned in bringing his lips closer to hers, and she strained up toward him, even if she wasn't aware of it.
“I will.” He spoke softly, his mouth only inches from hers.

This felt more like a story, an experience, that I let myself sink into, there's substantial aspects to capture your heart and mind; Lil's Muscogee heritage, family drama, history with INFR and PBRA, and Lil being a woman competing. Individually Lil outshone AJ for me a bit but he's what made them shine as a couple. There were some conversations that I thought were repeated and slowed down the story in the middle, a late reveal that didn't get the time needed to feel emotionally satisfying, and a, somewhat, abrupt ending. This is first in a series, so the CityBoyz storyline is probably going to be the continuing connection but for how heedful the rest of the story was paced, it made the ending feel rushed. This was an impressive debut that felt stripped down in its quietness, I felt the blood, sweat, tears, and skill in rodeo and ranching, my eyes watered out of nowhere with Lil fighting to remind everyone that “girls had try”, and the grumpy/sunshine romance delivered the sweet. There are a couple secondary characters that I'm hoping will get their own books in this series (Piper, please!), I'm pretty sure I caught a tease for AJ's friend Diablo and the rodeo queen Sierra and I'll definitely be in line to read them. Also, make sure to read the author's note at the end.… (más)

Romance With An Atypical Twang. Let's face it. When you think of rodeo, you don't exactly think of non-white dudes competing. Much less a non-white chick. Nor do you really think of "reality competition show", despite that particular type of show being *so* overdone these days. And yet, in this particular romance, we get all of the above. We get the obligatory overt Garth reference or two, a more subtle Merle reference or two, and two non-white rodeo champions putting it all on the line in a rodeo-based reality competition show in order to save the things they love. And since this is a romance tale, yeah, that builds along the way too. For the clean/ sweet crowd... y'all aint gonna like this one. It only has two outright sex scenes, but one of them is about as far from blink-and-you'll-miss-it as you can get without dragging the story or veering into erotica. Overall a well-done tale that sets up what looks to be a medium-coupled series - not so loose that the characters never appear in each other's books, but also not so tightly coupled that future readers would be completely lost if coming into the series in later books. It will be interesting to see where Ms. Bell goes from here and exactly how she executes stylistically on joining the series together. Very much recommended.… (más)