Review - - Small Town Hero

Small Town Hero

by Linda Lael Miller and Maisey Yates

Publisher: Kensington

Release Date: June 24, 2025

Reviewed by PJ

The towns may be small, but the hearts of the cowboy heroes in this duo of romantic novellas are as outsized as the rugged land that surrounds them . . .

ONE LONESOME COWBOY
by Linda Lael Miller
When a family crisis brings web designer and part-time house flipper Susannah Holiday to Arizona to care for her young niece, she’s soon juggling work, childcare—and her growing feelings for local paramedic and horse whisperer Ian McKenzie. They have more in common than meets the eye—including being cautious when it comes to love. But when a disturbing revelation from Susannah’s past surfaces, Ian is there to comfort her, and they both find their longing hearts opening to a better future—together . . .

COWBOY, TAKE ME AWAY
by Maisey Yates
After Birdie Lennox, daughter of a notorious cattle rustler, gets caught stealing a horse off Gunnar Parsons’ land, she ends up bunking in his barn to work off her debt—plus her daddy’s. But Birdie hardly has patience for Gunnar’s moralizing. The man inherited his ranch and has always hated her family. Still, it beats prison. Maybe. What neither anticipates is discovering they have more in common than they dreamed possible. Even more unexpected is the spark between them—and the love it might ignite . . .

PJ's Thoughts:

Fans of Linda Lael Miller and Maisey Yates should enjoy diving into new stories by these well-known western romance authors. For readers new to one or both, these quick reads are a great way to sample what both Miller and Yates have to offer. 

In "One Lonesome Cowboy," Miller explores love, family, community, trauma, and healing with a dash of mystery in a slow-burn romance that's both charming and heart-tugging. The characters drew me into their lives almost immediately and had me rooting for their happy endings.

Maisey Yates is known for her emotionally rich stories, often featuring characters with harsh or traumatic life experiences. "Cowboy, Take Me Away" features Birdie Lennox who may be one of the most wounded characters she's featured though she hides it well under a brash exterior. I really enjoyed watching Birdie and Gunnar slowly break down walls and open hearts in this enemies-to-lovers story of healing, redemption, community, and a hard-won happy ending. 

If you're looking for a quick, satisfying western romance with relatable characters, strong community, family dynamics, and heartfelt happy endings, add this duology to your summer reading list. 

Review - - Where the Creek Bends

Where the Creek Bends

by Linda Lael Miller

Publisher: Canary Street Press

Release Date: December 31, 2024

Reviewed by PJ

Madison Bettencourt has tried to assemble all the pieces of a perfect life, but nothing fits quite the way it should. She’s moved back home to Montana to care for her grandmother, who is slipping further and further away. And she’s called off her wedding, and worries her dreams of a family are fading with it.

As Madison rattles around her family home, childhood memories come flooding back. Bliss Morgan transformed eight-year-old Madison with her loyalty, and for a while, the two girls were as close as can be. But Madison never understood why Bliss suddenly vanished, leaving only a friendship bracelet and a message etched into a matchbook.

Before she can begin again, Madison must uncover what happened to Bliss, and Liam McKettrick—a widowed dad trying to repair his relationship with his two children—becomes her unlikely ally. He, too, understands the pang of regret. Yet there are mysteries that Madison hesitates to explore with anyone, and strange energies in Bettencourt Hall that blur the lines between past and present.

Poignant and utterly captivating, Where the Creek Bends shows that finding yourself begins with following your heart, no matter where it leads.

PJ's Thoughts:

I began reading Miller's McKettrick books more than twenty years ago. I loved the historical romances but it's been a while since I checked in with this family so I decided to give Miller's newest, Where the Creek Bends, a try. I was not disappointed.

This story is an enjoyable blend of women's fiction, sweet contemporary romance, and time-slip fiction. It's poignant, complex, and heart-tugging with well-placed bits of humor to prevent it from tilting too heavily to the angsty side though there is plenty of emotion. 

I enjoyed the time-slip facet of the book with the author telling the inter-connected dual timeline stories of Bliss and Madison. I was surprised - but pleased - by the direction that part of the story took.

I was in Liam's and Madison's corner from the moment she charged into his saloon in a wedding dress. They were both so likeable, so deserving of a happily ever after, and carrying so much emotional baggage. I liked that Miller gave them time to work through their individual issues while getting to know one another. 

My heart hurt so much for Liam and his children. I just wanted to hug them all; they had so much grief, anger, confusion, and forgiveness to work through. I was pleased that they were given the time and tools to make strides in a realistic way. No easy fixes. 

Though the book ended on a hopeful note, I would have liked an ending that wasn't quite so abrupt. Maybe an epilogue. Other than that, I thoroughly enjoyed the book and am hoping Miller has plans to return to Montana for more McKettrick stories. And I wouldn't be at all disappointed if we got to catch up with Liam, Madison, and the kids along the way. 

Review - - The 24 Days of Christmas

The 24 Days of Christmas

By Linda Lael Miller

Publisher: Lyrical Shine

Release Date: November 8, 2016

(originally published in

Jingle All the Way, Zebra, 2004)

 

   

Once upon a time Addie Hutton was the daughter of a wealthy, widowed judge, and the two most important people in her world were Eliza, the Huttons’ housekeeper, and Frank Raynor, the lost, young boy whom Eliza invited into her heart and her home. Addie and Frank grew up together, fell in love, and planned to marry. But when Addie went away to college, they grew apart, and Addie broke the engagement. She and Frank went on to build separate lives and to marry other people.

More than a decade later, Frank, now chief of police in Pine Crossing, Colorado and a widower, owns the big house where he lives with his seven-year-old daughter, Lissie. Her goal in life is to be an angel in the Christmas pageant at St. Mary’s Episcopal School. Divorced after her husband left her for a younger woman, Addie is broke and jobless, blacklisted as a journalist because she trusted a lying source. The day after Thanksgiving, she returns to Pine Crossing, but this time she will be renting the garage apartment where Eliza and Frank lived all those years ago. Addie has hardly arrived when she is joined by Henry, the six-year-old step-son whom she loves as if he were her own. Henry has been placed on a bus by his irresponsible father and sent to live with Addie for an indefinite period.

Lissie and Henry bond over an old, homemade matchbox Advent calendar, the same calendar that Addie and Frank once shared many holidays ago. What follows is a bit of history repeating itself as a motherless girl and a lost, frightened boy become fast friends and a man and a woman, battered by the slings and arrows of grown-up lives, renew the tie of friendship that once bound them together. Amid Christmas decorations, children’s dreams, and a caring (mostly) community, Addie and Frank fall in love again. With a little seasonal spirit, their story could end not only with a happy Christmas but with a happy ever after for all--including Floyd, the chubby beagle.

This Christmas novella is a digital reissue, so it is not a new book. Nevertheless, it is one of my favorites among this year’s holiday offerings. I have a soft spot for reunion romances, I love believable kids in Christmas stories, and I am always looking for a new Christmas keeper that offers more than tinsel and frolics under the mistletoe or elsewhere. This one met all criteria, and it even has a tiny redemption story for a mean teacher. It is a gentle, sweet, heartwarming story with a home-for-Christmas theme that works on multiple levels. I think it’s just what Santa ordered for readers who love a sentimental, feel-good Christmas romance as much as I do.

 ~Janga

Review - - The Creed Cowboys Trilogy

Linda Lael Miller has been one of my go-to Western Romance writers for many years.  I enjoy her small-town settings, strong, supportive families and the solid roots put down by her characters when they finally meet the person they're meant to love for a lifetime.  I especially enjoy reading her books back-to-back so it was with particular delight that I recently discovered the Creed Cowboys trilogy released in February, May and June of this year.  The books follow the journeys to love of Steven Creed and his identical twin cousins, Connor and Brody. 

A Creed in Stone Creek
Publisher:  HQN
Release Date:  February 22, 2011

The memories of familiar places are too heartwrenching for Denver defense attorney Steven Creed and his newly adopted five-year-old son, Matt.  After the deaths of Matt's parents, Steven's long-time best friends, the two move to Stone Creek, Arizona: a place of new beginnings for the newly-formed family of two.  One of the first people they meet is Melissa O'Ballivan, county proscutor and life-long resident of Stone Creek.  Melissa has closed herself off to love after being abandoned by her mother at a young age and losing her father and grandfather to death but, after watching her siblings find their soulmates, she has begun to open her mind to the possibility that there just might be more to life than her career.  Can her heart be far behind?  Not if a little boy and his ruggedly sexy new dad have anything to say about it!

Creed's Honor
Publisher:  HQN
Release Date:  May 31, 2011

Tricia McCall has wonderful memories of summers spent with her dad and great-grandmother in Lonesome Bend, Colorado but now she's a city girl and anxious to return to Seattle once the properties she inherited from her father finally sell.  She's been emotionally adrift since the deaths of both her father and her beloved dog, Rusty but is sure she'll be fine once she returns home to Seattle.  Her best friend lives there with her husband and Tricia's adored goddaughter and she has plans to opening an art gallery there with the man she's been dating even though she's finally started to admit to herself that the relationship has cooled and, as her friends have been telling her, he's not the right man for her.  Then fate steps in - in the forms of a lost, bedraggled dog and one sexy cowboy - and suddenly, Tricia wonders if maybe she isn't already home.

Steadfast and honorable are two words that describe Connor Creed.  Sexy, rugged and handsome work too.  Also emotionally unavailable.  After his twin brother, Brody and the girl Connor had planned to marry betrayed him ten years earlier,  Connor poured all of his energy and emotion into working the family ranch outside Lonesome Bend.  But now Brady has returned with the news that he plans to stay and work the ranch that's half his and Connor's emotions are erupting...and beginning to heal.  A sweet, shy woman who makes his heart race and her matchmaking dog could bring the love his heart craves or shatter it to pieces if she decides to return to Seattle for good.

The Creed Legacy
Publisher:  HQN
Release  Date:  June 28, 2011

Brody Creed has experienced plenty of heartache in his life.  Caused plenty too, though not everything of which he's been accused.  But, after a long estrangement from his family, he's returned to Lonesome Bend, Colorado; drawn back by the land that's been in his family for generations and the family he's been away from for too long.  This time, he's determined to put down roots, carry his share of the load on the family ranch and mend fences with those he loves and has hurt, including the woman he walked out on seven years earlier.

Growing up in a series of foster homes, Carolyn Simmons has never known the love of a family, the security of a home of her own.  She thought she had found it - once - with Brody Creed but the rodeo cowboy disappeared from her life with all the finesse and stupidity of a clueless young man, leaving her heart in pieces.  Now he's back and asking for a second chance.  Only a fool would say yes and Carolyn is no fool.  But, no matter how hard she tries, she's never been able to find another man who makes her heart melt like Brody Creed.  Will granting him that second chance finally bring her heart's desire of a home and family of her own with the one man she's always been destined to love?


I enjoyed this trilogy.  Miller's stories are comforting reads for me and she rarely lets me down.  There were minor issues that occasionally pulled me from the stories (Steven and Connor both naming their sons Blue.  Carolyn knowing Brody's "secret" in book two but not knowing it in book three.)  but, overall, the writing was good enough to pull me back in.  I liked the main characters in all three books and found several likable secondary characters (Tricia's great-grandmother, her god-daughter, Steven's adopted son and dad and step-mom, to name a few) who added richness to the stories without detracting from the hero and heroine.  I've heard a few people complain about the presence of the rescued dogs in all three books, noting that they were too prominent in the stories.  For me, there was an important reason for the appearance of each of the dogs in the three stories and, being a long-time dog lover and "mom" of several rescues myself, I can only say that the experiences of the humans and their dogs (and cat) in the books mirrored much of my daily life and added an extra dimension to the stories that I found believable and enjoyable. 

How do you feel about kids and pets having prominent roles in the romances you read?

~PJ

Guest Review - - Willow

Willow
By Linda Lael Miller
Publisher: Pocket
Release Date: September 28, 2010

Willow Gallagher’s wedding to a man who is blackmailing her is interrupted by the appearance of Gideon Marshall, a railroad baron and the man Willow married in a fake ceremony two years earlier. The fake wedding, a bad joke with Willow as victim, turns out to have been a legal ceremony. Gideon plans to have his marriage to Willow annulled to free him to marry the daughter of another major stockholder in the Central Pacific Railroad. He also has a second purpose for coming to Virginia City; he is determined to capture the outlaw who is robbing his trains. The outlaw is Willow’s brother Steven, to whom she is devoted. As if this weren’t complication enough, Gideon is also the younger son of Willow’s stepmother.

As a young teen, Willow had seen in Gideon’s portrait the personification of male good looks and courage. She had even called him Lancelot. Predictably, when they meet, she falls in love with him. Even the cruel trick he and his bother played on her is not enough to end her love. Gideon’s attraction to Willow is no less powerful, and the two are soon living as husband and wife on the ranch Gideon purchases for his bride. But Willow’s loyalties are tested, as she and Gideon struggle with trust issues and with their very different convictions about the kind of man Steven Gallagher truly is.

Willow spent the first nine years of her life with her mother (ironically named Chastity) and her mother’s outlaw lover; her brother and a Mexican servant Maria as her protectors. She has spent the last ten years in her father’s home with a stepmother who resents her as a reminder of Devlin Gallagher’s infidelity. Yet, except for being “high-spirited and impulsive,” she seems to have escaped remarkably unscathed and with extraordinarily dim memories of her early years. Separation from his father has been the defining factor in shaping the man her brother becomes, but neither her fatherless years, the death of her mother, nor the radical change from an outlaw’s life to a life of privilege appears to have affected Willow in significant ways. I had a difficult time accepting her apparently easy adjustment and a harder time seeing her as a heroine because she never seems grown up.

Gideon, too, leaves me ambivalent. He has decided appeal, but I can’t forget that he was a decade older than the then-seventeen-year old Willow when he agreed to the fake wedding. Like Willow, his past leaves few scars. He has grown up virtually parentless. His father is dead, and growing up in San Francisco, he and his brother see their mother, who lives in Montana Territory with her second husband, only occasionally. His resentment of his mother’s choices is revealed only after her death, a death that occurs unexpectedly and that conveniently frees Devlin Gallagher to marry his mistress, a more sympathetic character than his embittered wife. But it is Gideon’s brother Zachary that troubles me most of all. At first I saw him as a charming scoundrel, not above scoring off his golden-boy younger brother, yet not really evil. Then he turns out to have manipulated several “accidents” from which Gideon barely escapes with his life, and he also tries to force himself upon Willow. He’s a would-be murderer and rapist, and yet he just disappears from the story after Willow knees him and pushes him out of the rig. Another villain escapes as well. I found the characterization thin, and I was frustrated by plot points that were either dropped or concluded too conveniently.

Willow is a revised edition of an early book by Linda Lael Miller. The original was published in 1984, the year following Miller’s debut. Miller describes the new and improved version as a “retelling” and an expansion of “subplots, love scenes, and . . . characterization.”  Since I haven’t read the original, I can’t be sure what was added. The secondary love stories of Gideon’s intended bride and Steven and Willow’s father and his mistress may be among the additions. Almost certainly the number of love scenes has been increased, and perhaps the level of sensuality has been increased as well. The story pairs a stubborn, independent heroine and a prideful, dominant hero, and the resulting conflicts temporarily resolve themselves in bed (or outdoors or in the stable or . . .) until the couple achieves their HEA. It’s an interesting book as part of this author’s prolific oeuvre, and Miller’s many fans doubtless will enjoy this revamped story that in most ways is quintessential Linda Lael Miller.

~Janga