This is my very first A.J. Pine book, and her confident storytelling and likable characters have convinced me to keep her on my to-watch pile. A good story with likeable characters, Holding Out for a Cowboy is missing a few ingredients that keep it from hitting DIK range, but is still compelling.

Casey Walsh is horrified when her roommate Ivy wakes her up late for an upcoming interview, which sets off a nightmare cascade of events that includes Casey scorching her own hair and discovering a mysterious bruise under her eye after doing a round of shots the night before. Casey’s dream to go back to beauty school in Reno (and get all of her credits reinstated after dropping out twelve years before to tend bar) seems to be on shaky ground, but at least she manages to leave the house and make good time.

Mechanic Boone Murphy – Casey’s ex-boyfriend – is set to get married the same day that Casey is heading off to her interview, and after that he’s going to abandon Meadow Valley, Nevada for life in Los Angeles, where his fiancée Elizabeth will join a top-flight real estate agency. Boone, whose reading disability has left him feeling like an odd man out, has no idea what he’s going to do in the city of angels. But his love for the lovely Elizabeth is certainly worth that uncertainty, right? No points for guessing he’s getting married outside of Reno and his path is about to cross with lost lady love Casey’s.

A speeding Casey wrecks her late grandmother’s beloved car, and who should happen to stumble upon the scene but Boone? The twosome are gruffly reunited, and he gives her a ride to her interview and then the hospital, even though it’s going to make him late for his wedding. They decide to try to be friends, but in the end they’re both left wondering if they’re making the right choices in the present.

Twelve years before, the relationship between Boone and eighteen-year-old Casey had been going great gangbusters when an unexpected pregnancy (after a single night of sex) in spite of the fact that they’d used a condom and birth control pills, had thrown a huge wrench into their secondary education plans. Deciding to get married, Boone plans to get a degree in equine medicine, and Casey is utterly unsure if they’re really ready for this next huge step. Then Casey miscarries and Boone’s behavior causes them to break up, setting them on their differing current courses. Can they overcome these bad memories to find true love together?

The best thing about Holding Out for a Cowboy is that everyone in it is a grown adult trying their best. It’s easy to like Casey and Boone, and it’s easy to understand why they could’ve never made things work when they were eighteen. It’s nice to get a second-chance romance featuring people in their thirties, and to see both Casey and Boone struggle to figure out who they are as adults. It’s not about just getting a second chance at love, which is nice enough – although their romance does move a little too quickly – but also about Casey and Boone each getting to return to careers they both like.
There are a lot of great supporting characters, including Boone’s brothers, Casey’s father, Ivy, and the various natives of the inn where Casey slings brew. And the small-town setting feels quite authentic. Even Elizabeth avoids falling into the evil ex stereotype, though she’s perhaps a little too unrealistically forgiving here.

I did take off some points because the inciting incident which caused Casey and Boone to break up feels a little weak. While the miscarriage feels like a credible reason, I didn’t think Boone’s behavior was too untoward. Also the epilogue is very treacly, almost to the point where one feels like doing some serious eye-rolling. But those quibbles aside, Holding out for a Cowboy will definitely leave its audience smiling.

Buy it at: Amazon, Audible or your local independent retailer

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