Series: Single Dad Collection, #3
Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Steam: 🔥🔥🔥
Release Date: May 22nd, 2021
Add to Goodreads | Amazon.in (Available on KU)
Dear Counselor,
It was supposed to be simple favor for my very important boss, Frank Kaminsky of the Salt Lake Slammers professional basketball team—go to his good friend Tex Jameson’s luxury ranch and provide personal medical care for his recently injured teenage son.
I thought it’d be a working vacation of sorts—a chance for my city-girl self to experience something I would never otherwise do—but everything is upside down, and absolutely nothing is as I thought it would be.
For one, this patient is not a teenage boy.
He’s a real-life, blue-eyed, tough-as-nails, thirtysomething cowboy who is so darn strong he looks like he could lift a car just for the heck of it.
He’s also stubborn, rude, and we don’t get along…at all.
Add in the heart-melting vision of him as a single father to the cutest little girl on the planet, and I’ve found myself in a whole different dimension of trouble.
Lust. Feelings. A whole lot of enemies-to-lovers-style complication.
Please help me. My name is Dr. Leah Levee, I am a victim of false advertising, and if I’m not careful, this Grumpy Cowboy might just be the death of me.
Max Monroe have not only delivered a book with some of my favourite tropes, but they did it with style. As always. Grumpy Cowboy is the third in the Single Dad collection and if you know me at all, know that I love the single parent trope and would read every single book that fulfilled that trope. But they tossed in enemies to lovers, grump and sunshine, cowboy and city girl, slow burning in a small town and even added their famous brand of humour.
“If you typed the words “hot cowboy” into Google, I’m pretty sure this guy would be the number one search result.”
Rhett Jameson hurts himself in the most ridiculous way possible and is on the mend from a busted knee. Since he’s meant to be working the farm and one day taking it over, his father, sneaky old man that he is, gets involved and hires a young and well recommended physical therapist for a basketball team to come and help his son out. Leah Levee shows up in this small town farm looking for a teenage boy and comes face-to-face with a grumpy cowboy who is all man and all sex appeal. And if that’s not enough, he comes with the most adorable little girl too.
Grumpy Cowboy is hilarious, hot and hella entertaining, so brace yourself for a wild ride. Rhett doesn’t need help and he’s obviously the epitome of ‘grumpy cowboy’ when Leah shows up to help him out, but she’s a tough cookie and she’s not going to give up. Rhett and Leah have the most amusing enemies to lovers banter. I loved that it was straight up dislike for Rhett and even though Leah makes him hot and bothered, he just wants her gone because she’s making it really hard for him to do his job. Leah is relentless and she knows that she can make Rhett better and help him get back on the horse, pun intended. So Rhett decides that he’s going to make the most of Leah’s generosity and he’s going to have a little fun. Which includes making her do all the things that he should be doing – including letting the horses out to exercise and collecting bull sperm.
Because it’s a slow burn, everything between Leah and Rhett takes a long time to build up. However, I enjoyed watching them go from growling at each other to slowly accepting the other and then falling in love. I’m always really skeptical about enemies to lovers because how much can you really hate a person if you’re going to love them in the end, right? But I liked how it was done in Grumpy Cowboy. They don’t hate each other, but they definitely don’t like each other.
“This man might be sinfully good-looking and the love and adoration he shows for his daughter could pull at any woman’s heartstrings, but ninety-nine percent of the time that I’ve been here, he’s either been avoiding me or been a big fat jerk.”
Leah is such a brilliant character, which is not surprising, Max Monroe always write interesting and relatable women. She’s young, but the best in her line of work and she’s a smart, capable and amazing city girl. Of course, Leah is not meant for farm life with her pretty dresses, high heels and branded clothes. But she makes it work. I love that she’s not afraid to back down from a challenge – which includes the person she’s meant to be helping heal. We all have a little bit of Leah Levee in us, and that’s what makes her so relatable and amazing.
Rhett is the complete opposite of Leah. He’s a farm boy for life, born and raised and slated to take over the farm one day. He’s also the most adorable girl dad, doting on his little girl and loving her, putting up with her weird requests and just loving her all of the time. He is the grumpy cowboy, so you know what you’re in for. I really enjoyed watching Rhett go through the motions of needing help and just accepting it when things start to work for him. I also really liked knowing that Rhett wasn’t just taking over the family business because it’s expected of him, but because he wants to run the farm and make it a life for himself.
Slow burn doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no heat or steam between these two, sometimes just a look can do the trick. Leah and Rhett build up a lot of chemistry through the course of the book and while they do that, Leah builds a relationship with Rhett’s kid. As you know, that’s really the way to win the heart of a single dad and boy, it works on Rhett. I do miss the Max Monroe books of old when we got to experience a lot of steam early on in the books, but Grumpy Cowboy still packs a whole lot of heat that is delicious in every way.
These characters are so entertaining, with lots of moments with Rhett’s family who are just as much as you’d imagine. I also loved all of the farm life we got to see, all of the details about how a farm is run to the little things that you usually would not care about. Max Monroe totally went all out for this book, because it captured my heart and soul in every way. I can’t wait to meet more single dads, but ALSO, I am so ready for their next series!
Thanks to Max Monroe and Social Butterfly PR for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.
anna reads here 