She’s so tiny. He has a six pack and a huge dick. She likes to read and watch football omg you guys she’s such a nerd! He’s a fuckboy that likes to party and doesn’t fall in love. She’s had a crush on him for so many years. But oh shocking she’s the exception and he’s falling for her, who would’ve thought! She loves to tease him. He can’t stop looking at her body and thinking about fucking her. So they do. A lot. Like, a lot. I didn’t need to know the details of every single time they fucked but thank you I guess? And the rest is history. A long, torturous, repetitive, so bad it’s almost entertaining history.

I was going to stop my review there but I actually have more to say. Can we please stop using “female” when talking about women? This was done not once, not twice, but THREE times, one of which was said by the fmc.

The last ~100 pages were quite literally unnecessary. It wasn’t even a third act breakup, it was just filler to, idk, make the book heavier if you’re reading a physical copy? So much back and forth, the same issue being repeated over and over again, the same conversation just in different words and in different moments. I can understand the emotional impact it had on the characters and how it affected their relationship and made it more solid, but there was still no reason to drag it for as long as it did.

If you’ve read an Elle Kennedy book before, I'm sorry to say this is exactly the same as her other ones, and I mean exact same type of characters, exact same type of storyline, exact same tropes, exact same type of conflicts and resolutions. Like good for her for finding her niche I guess but at least throw in some creativity.

Need to preface this review by saying I’m not really the target audience for this book, with this being a cowboy romance, having the enemies-to-lovers trope and a brute mmc, which did influence the way I felt about this book. I can see how this can be great for others, but it just didn’t work for me.

First of all, and I know this has nothing to do with the actual story, but I hate that the book’s title is the mmc’s name when the story mainly revolves and starts with the fmc. Second of all, we get it, they hate each other and Mollie doesn’t want to stay at the ranch while Cash doesn’t want Mollie there. This is repeated so often and it was unnecessary, it felt like more like a case of tell not show when there were another ways for the reader to understand they hated each other without explicitly stating the obvious.

Something that I noticed and hated is that Mollie starts to get soft around Cash by the way he’s gentle around his people, how much he cares about his family and it turns out he’s not as much of an asshole as she thought. He, on the other hand, starts to notice her more because of her body, her “long flawless legs” and her “full lips”, and he only starts to care about her as a person when he (emotionally) hurts her. Talk about a double standard here.

The sex scenes were horrendous and I actually recoiled reading them. So much use of the word pussy and sometimes unnecessarily so, I promise the reader knows what’s happening and what the characters are talking about without having to repeat it over and over again. Sometimes it was also just awkward? And don’t get me started on the pet name honey, I very much personally hated and also thought it was overused.

Despite everything that I hated, I did enjoy seeing them get closer and start to bond and seeing them care about each other, even if showing it in questionable ways.

Look, I can understand what this book is trying to do and I did find the plot somewhat interesting, but when the characters whose journey you’re following keep being homophobic, racist, misogynistic and extremely violent, it becomes insufferable to read. Even if they are presented as unlikable, it gets tiring having to see these same behaviors over and over again with little to no remorse.

While there is some character development from Buddy Lee and Ike, it doesn’t really work well and it’s all for the wrong reasons. Even though this is a story of revenge for their sons, everything is about Buddy Lee and Ike. Everything they do, everything they learn, everything they “suffer” to have their revenge is to make themselves feel better and what they think they need to do because they couldn’t do better when their sons were actually alive.

I enjoyed the writing in how easy it was to understand and very smooth to read, but there were some analogies or similes that honestly made no sense? Like the writing has a very serious tone and then we’re hit with an analogy that honestly just made me laugh, when I’m not really sure that was the intended reaction.