Two Stars

Overall, I think Maisey Yates is one of the best Harlequin Desire authors writing for their line right now. She’s excellent at creating three-dimensional, emotional, flawed characters with a relatively well fleshed out romance within the tight page restraints – a super skill if you ask me! RANCHER’S CHRISTMAS STORM was a classic Yates plotline – a young, feisty, motherless heroine who happens to be a virgin paired with her older brothers’ antagonistic, sexually experienced, emotionally damaged best friend.

Now I love a good snowed-in-together romance, which is why I picked this book up in the first place, and for snowed in fun, this book delivered. I really liked the time the couple spent in the cabin together. It was cute and sexy, and I really appreciated the sauna scene! Unfortunately, I had two major beefs with this book that kept me from giving it a higher rating.

First of all, I feel like I’ve read this Yates book before, and it was better. I’m specifically thinking of COWBOY TO THE CORE, which I absolutely loved but had a very similar plot and main characters to this book. But I’ve probably read 20 Yates novels with similar themes and characters, and this just wasn’t one of her better combinations. Both main characters fell a little flat for me, and the emotions felt forced.

My second beef was the number of secondary characters. This book combined plotlines and characters from two Yates series, and it was just too much. There were too many references to previous couples and too few pages to make their brief cameos worth the page time. It sounds minor, but it takes up a lot of page time when you’re working with a short book. Plus, I’ve actually read most of the books referenced ,and I still didn’t care. If this was my first Yates novel, I’d be lost.

Overall, I know what I’m getting when I pick up a Harlequin Desire, and I set my expectations accordingly; I just expected more from this book and Maisey Yates because she usually’s so great! If you want a quick snowed in romance, this might be for you – but I know there are better snowed in romances out there (even some written by Maisey Yates!)

**I received a free copy of this book in order to provide an honest review**

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