Holly Jolly Cowboy

Wyoming Cowboy Series, Book 7

By: Jessica Clare

Narrated by: Abby Craden

Length: 7 hrs and 14 mins

Publisher's summary

From New York Times best-selling author Jessica Clare comes a Christmas romance about a cowboy grinch and the woman who stole his heart.

Local waitress Holly Dawson needs a better paying job to cover her sister's college tuition. Given that it's Christmas and she's broke as a joke, she's feeling pretty bah-humbug. New jobs are hard to come by in a town as small as Painted Barrel, especially as the town dropout.

When Holly's offered a job at the Flat C Ranch to clean and cook for the cowboys that work there, it seems like a dream come true...except for one thing. Her nemesis, the incredibly handsome (and annoyingly arrogant) Adam Calhoun works there. It doesn't matter that he loves dogs more than people, or that he's a war veteran. No Christmas spirit can save that particular grinch.

When the rest of the ranch hands go out of town for the holidays, Holly and Adam will be forced to work closely together. No sweat. Holly can deal with Adam. And if she doesn't kill him first, she just might fall in love.

Contains mature themes.

©2021 Jessica Clare (P)2021 Tantor

Holly Jolly is right!

This was a fun slow to heat up love story and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Holly and Adam sparked from the very beginning and it was great to see their love story unfold. Abby's narration was great too. I hope there are more books in the series from of Painted Barrel.

Irredeemable "hero"

I made it to chapter 11 before DNFing. The good performance of the audiobook does not outweigh the bad love interest.

I don't usually leave reviews - especially negative ones because I know how hard it is to pour your soul into writing. But honestly, Britney Spears was singing about Adam when she said "a guy like you should wear a warning". And since Adam is a fictional person who cannot wear a warning, I have taken it upon myself to provide the warning.

spoilers below:

Adam is the worst love interest I've read in a LOOOOONG time. I like enemies to lovers, and short of fantasy settings, I expect there to be petty grievances and mild immaturity. This was beyond that. Adam feeds Holly's dog after she leaves a note explicitly asking for no one to feed her as it will make her sick. He routinely breaks into her house to steal her food and decides to get revenge on her for only feeding him PB&J even though Holly has explicitly asked him what he wants her to make him and he refuses to tell her. So he ruins her baking and allows her to enter the terrible cake into the town's competition. She's super upset and he decides to check on her, he breaks into her house (again) and eavesdrops on her while she's crying to her sister about how terrible it went and how she blames herself for being distracted.

Even after learning that Holly is supporting her college sister and all, instead of apologizing or fessing up, he goes to the HAIR SALON TO ASK THE HAIR STYLIST WHAT HOLLY'S DEAL IS. And that's when I was done.