Summer Nights with a Cowboy

Starred review from January 24, 2022
Crews polishes off her steamy Kittridge Ranch trilogy with this breathless and arousing tale of old secrets and new beginnings (after All Night Long with a Cowboy). Traveling nurse Janie Atwood ostensibly arrives in Cold River, Colo., to care for octogenarian Damaris Gardner, but she has an ulterior motive: investigating her possible connection to one of the town’s founding families. Drop-dead gorgeous Sheriff Zack Kittridge, who lives like a monk in Cold River while taking his (admittedly “a little bit dirty”) pleasures outside the county to avoid gossip, is distrustful of her from the start. Gradually, however, his suspicions that Janie’s taking advantage of Damaris dissipate and the less experienced Janie’s fear that all men will forever see her as a kid sister dissolves in the face of his interest in her. Their mutual desire swells until Zack wants to “bathe” in her and Janie feels “plugged into an electric outlet.” In Zack, Crews handily delivers Damaris’s definition of a perfect man: “a gentleman on the street but a cowboy in the sheets.” It’s not all blistering heat, however; subplots about Damaris’s feelings on aging, Zack’s adulterous father, and Zack’s brothers and friends helping him to reestablish his family ranching ties add depth. This lusty romance is sure to fulfill some fantasies.

February 4, 2022

Klutzy and charming eldercare nurse Janie Atwood arrives in the small town of Cold River looking for answers and a place to heal from the loss of the grandparents who raised her. A mysterious letter inspires her to dig into the history of the town, but this brings her to the attention of the wary Sheriff Zack Kittredge. The chaos surrounding Janie is exactly what Zack has been avoiding his whole life, so when he finds himself inexplicably drawn to and constantly surprised by her, he begins to question his past decisions. The grumpy sheriff is forced to examine his decades-long feud with his father, his complicated relationship with the family ranch, and why he never sought a relationship with a woman in town until Janie stumbled into his life. When honor and history collide, Janie and Zack must look deeper into who they are and see if their relationship will survive the summer. VERDICT In the third entry in the "Kittredge Ranch" series, Crews creates a deeply emotional and family-oriented love story filled with great chemistry and good steam.--Jenna Harmison

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