Downpour is the second in the Griffith Brothers series from author Maggie Gates and while I’ve enjoyed other books by her and wish I could have loved this one it wasn’t a winner for me.

Ray Griffiths is a champion bull rider. The prologue is told from Ray’s perspective as he recovers after a competition accident that broke his spine and put him into a coma. After he regains consciousness, he slowly, over the next eighteen months, regains use of his arms and limited feeling and movement in his legs. Ray is living on the family farm and refusing to face his family or his agent, or think about what his future looks like.

Brooke meanwhile, lives in a shared house with a bunch of roommates who are taking advantage of her. She’s optimistic about everything, and the house feels like home, even if it’s mostly a frat party. She has roommates she can hang out with, (even if they eat all her food), and she pays cash for her rent (and believes the boys when they say that she still owes them money.) Brooke has a particular kind of chaotic sunshiny nature that comes across as brainlessness. She works as a residential care assistant, but she’s been fired by nine of her recent clients because she is unreliable – she’s always late, misplacing things, mixing up meals, getting distracted, and so on. She has only one client left, and when her agency offers her some hours with Ray, with a bonus if she can stay for a week, she takes them.

Meanwhile, Ray has been going through assistants as he antagonises everyone his family hires to assist him to live independently, so in a small town with a limited workforce, they are running out of options. Brooke is Ray’s last chance, and he is hers, so they need to get on. After an awkward meeting (for which Brooke is late, again) they come to an agreement that if she can just shut up for a minute and keep his family off his back, Ray won’t fire her, and as these two get the measure of each other, they agree to a truce. Brooke learns about the farm and farming and Ray sees her warmth and uncomplicated generosity, even though she is irritating and not much help at all. There’s mostly off-page physical therapy for Ray which still gives the reader a strong sense of how he struggles with his rehabilitation.

Ray puts up with Brooke’s relentless optimism because she is kind, and she takes him out of his self pity. It doesn’t hurt that they are hot for each other – Ray loves how Brooke looks, and she not only finds Ray sexy, but she’s also drawn to all that he represents – family, stability, and a protectiveness that is so appealing for a vulnerable girl with no real support. The story is steamy, Ray’s upper body athleticism serves him well and Brooke brings her sunshiney-ness to the bedroom although I was surprised she didn’t need a heads-up before being blindfolded and trussed up in a bondage rope arrangement.

Downpour is evocative and neatly paced as we whoosh along to a happily ever after, but the huge change in Brooke’s personality around the half-way point simply beggars belief. She goes from utter disorganised cluelessness – unable to hold down a job, get her car serviced or cook an egg – to being able to schedule equine boarding and grooming appointments, co-ordinate vet visits and run riding programs for school groups. Now I love a good character arc, and I love the transformational power of love, but I’m not sure how Brooke can possibly be cured of her disorganisation, credulousness, and idiocy by falling in love with Ray. It feels like a personality transplant rather than character growth and mars what is otherwise a tidy cowboy romance.

There’s some good stuff here; the depiction of the ranch is amazing, and the Griffith family are fully realised and work for and against Ray with his recovery. Ray struggles with his situation but he’s not entirely self-absorbed, and he’s doing the work on himself. Characters are true to the other book in the series Dust Storm (yes, Cassandra is still a bitch but she gets things done. Christian is still a honey, as are his daughters, and so on. But Brooke’s personality swap and the un-negotiated kink bring my final grade in at a C. If you’re in the market for a cowboy romance with optimistic disability representation and can get past the personality transplant and unhinged rope-play Downpour might work better for you than it did for me.