Mistletoe in Texas

Mistletoe in Texas
by Kari Lynn Dell
Recommended Ages: 15+

I picked up this unusually thick romance novel a while ago, for what reason I can't recall now. Maybe it was the fact, which I picked up somewhere, that the author was a genuine athletic trainer like the book's lead female character, and that she was just as genuinely involved in the rodeo scene amidst which the novel is set. Or maybe it's because she was from Montana, where my parents recently moved and where I have yet to visit. It appealed to me for some reason, so I picked it up and, in fits and starts over a couple of months, I actually read it. And despite the fact that it totally demands an Adult Content Advisory, I'm not mad at it or anything. My attention has just been scattered and I'm not blaming the book for that.

In the book, Hank and Grace grew up together in a small town in the Texas panhandle. She was his best friend whose brains helped him make it through school. He was a handsome jock, an up and coming rodeo bullfighter, and her hopeless crush ... until he rebounded into her arms after another girl broke his heart. She had just found out she was pregnant with his baby and was about to tell him the news when she caught him on a really bad day, and he embarrassed her in public with a romantic brush-off that left her devastated. But he went on to have his own rodeo-career-ending psychiatric meltdown, and disappeared from the neighborhood for a while. Grace kept her pregnancy quiet (particularly from her strictly religious family), gave the baby up for adoption and came back to Texas to work as a high school athletic trainer and moonlight as a team roper with the same rodeo family that had given Hank his first step. And now Hank has returned after a period of healing in Montana, with his sights set on rebuilding the bridges he burned with family, community and especially Grace.

Which is all prologue to a story about a guy who hurt a girl in the deepest possible way proving to her that he has really loved her all along and is worthy of being loved back. Meanwhile he also picks up the pieces of his broken relationship with his father while also repairing the run-down ranch and dreaming of a fresh start in a business they both love – one focusing not on cows but on horses. There's a lot of drama about reconciliation and self-therapy and, of course, a steamy romance. Its horsey, rodeo bits have a great authenticity to them, if I'm any judge (but I've only covered a few rodeos as a local newspaper reporter). It's not badly written. Overall, I'd say it's OK. My only quibble would be, as I said, that it's longer than you'd expect of a Harlequin-type romance and you can, I've found, spend months reading it without ever getting that "I just can't put it down" feeling.

Kari Lynn Dell died in 2020. She was the author of six "Texas Rodeo" novels, of which this seems to be the fifth; the first was Reckless in Texas, and the sixth was Relentless in Texas. She also wrote Last Chance Rodeo, a.k.a. The Long Ride Home, which was apparently supposed to be part of the "Blackfeet Nation" series but ended up being the only installment. Given her deft delivery of convincing rodeo details, her early death is a loss that I feel.