Published: October 27, 2020
Oh man this book was definitely different and so very interesting. It wasn’t based on the ranch or even around ranch life which was kind of to be expected since it was Cooper’s story and not one of the Harper boys. In this one Cooper meets the new comer in town Marlee who is looking into Brice and Naomi and their adoption. Marlee is a PI who investigates missing babies. Generally these babies go missing not just because they are kidnapped but because their mothers are being murdered and they are being stolen from their mother’s bodies. Marlee believes that the baby boy that Brice and Naomi just adopted was one of these children and though they look great on paper Marlee knows the extent that people will go to in order to get a baby of their own. Including asking no questions on where the baby came from. That is what leads her to their little part of Texas but Cooper and his friends soon realize that this is a bigger problem that is centered around their town and county. Since Cooper had been feeling a bit wishy-washy on what he wanted to do with his life now that he left the armed forces he found that helping Marlee with her PI work was just as invigorating as anything else he had been doing. Now he just needed to convince Marlee that staying together would be the best thing for both of them.
Not only was the romance in this book just so good. From Marlee being wary and aloof to Cooper knowing that he didn’t want to be without her. But it also took on a pretty dark issue. That’s what I love about this series from Donna Grant. They could easily be your basic cowboy romances and everything that entails but these ones deal with things like cattle rustling, sexual abuse in rodeo, and now how children are stolen to fill people’s need for a baby during adoptions. Though these are all hard issues and every book deals with some type of hard issue they are also eye opening and hopefully make the reader think beyond the fantasy of the narrative and into the real world. These things happen all the time but the average person doesn’t know about it. Though many of us cannot do anything it is good to at least know in order to be prepared when we could do something. That’s what I love about these ones. They are books of substance that take on the real world. You don’t want to miss out on this one. It will be hard read but it will also be totally worth it.
—“Marlee released Cooper and said, “We had a room. We actually had an entire house, and then you showed up.'” – Marlee to Jasper—
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