Their Christmas baby is on the way. And so is an obsessed killer… Dev Wyatt’s worst fear has come true. Someone from the Wyatts’ dangerous past is stalking his family–and his best friend, Sarah Knight. When she asked Dev to help her have a child, Sarah did not expect her pregnancy would place her in danger, but now Sarah must take shelter on the Wyatt ranch. As she and Dev battle escalating … battle escalating threats, will they survive long enough to become a family?
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Who are Dev and Sarah? What is going on with and around each of them? Who are the Wyatt brothers? Who is Ace? What do we learn about Sarah and AW? Why does Sarah have to leave her home I got so caught up in this book when the first note from AW showed up! Who is AW? What changes do we see in the characters? What deal is struck and how does it change? Read to see why this story had me having a hard time putting it down. Suspenseful is the one word to describe it, even with a HEA.
RECEIVED THIS BOOK AS A GIFT from Netgalley FOR A FAIR/HONEST REVIEW and REVIEWER FOR Bloggin’ With M. Brennan.
Good book. Though this is the sixth and final book in the series, it is the first one I read. The author did a good job of filling in enough of the backstory that I wasn’t lost. I do want to go back and read the others.
Dev is the last of the Wyatt brothers who is unattached. He worked in law enforcement until his attempt to arrest his father ended with him nearly beaten to death. Unable to continue his career, Dev feels worthless and keeps everyone at a distance while he works the family ranch. His best friend is Sarah Knight, who works on the ranch next door.
Like Dev, Sarah is the last of the Knight sisters left at home. Her sisters are all married to or living with Wyatt brothers. She is determined, independent, and has loved Dev for years. After watching her sisters start families, Sarah decides she wants a baby of her own. Who else would she choose as the father but her best friend?
I enjoyed the development of the relationship between Dev and Sarah. She was the only one who seemed to be able to get past the walls Dev threw up. She did it through sheer stubborn perseverance, poking and prodding Dev until he did what she wanted. She did the same thing in convincing him to be her “baby daddy.” Sarah told Dev that she didn’t expect anything of him and that she intended to raise the baby on her own. Though that is what she told him, deep down she hoped that he would want more. Meanwhile, Dev works hard to maintain his distance, which is increasingly difficult after their night together.
Sarah has nearly given up hope when a new threat appears against the Wyatt brothers, and by extension, her sisters. She is near the end of her pregnancy when it all begins, and Dev finds an unexpectedly intense protectiveness kicks in. As the threats intensify, Dev discovers that it is harder to maintain his previous detachment. I loved seeing his walls start to crack and crumble as his need to protect Sarah takes precedence. I also enjoyed seeing Sarah’s stubborn independence soften as she faced the reality of the situation. Dev’s “aha” moment in realizing his feelings comes when it’s almost too late, but love wins the day. There is an awesome scene at the end between Dev and the baby and Sarah. I loved the epilogue and seeing the whole family together.
The suspense of the story was good. With their father dead, there is a great deal of confusion and worry over who sent the first threatening note. I ached for Dev, who figured it out because it added to his feelings of failure. Each successive threat ramps up the tension as the danger intensifies. There were a couple of unexpected twists, including one that involved Sarah. When the final confrontation came, I was glued to the pages as Dev faced down their foe. The ending was a nail-biter, especially with Sarah’s situation. I loved Grandma Pauline and her feisty determination.
Let me start by stating that had I known that this novel was the conclusion of Nicole Helm’s Badlands Cop series, I would never have requested an advance reader copy of this title from Netgalley–not because of the author, who writes well, but because I’d only read the first book in the series, and that was almost a year and more than 200 novels ago. Absolutely nothing about this novel or the two families featured in the series was at all familiar, and since there are so many couples who were already featured in previous novels I haven’t read, I spent 90% of the this novel trying to figure out who was married to whom and which of the two families they belonged to–even though the author did include a cast of characters at the beginning. For these reasons and several others, I cannot in good conscience give this novel more than a 3-star rating.
The main characters in Close Range Christmas are Sarah Knight and Dev Wyatt, apparently the last two unmarried members of both families. Sarah is one tough cookie, fiercely independent, and most definitely crazy about Dev Wyatt. Dev is the son of Ace Wyatt, head of the Sons of the Badlands MC, an abusive, hard-hearted and evil man, who, a year and I don’t know how many novels ago, came very close to beating Dev to death. The physical and emotional damage he inflicted has left Dev with a painful limp, any chance of being the cowboy he wanted to be as shattered as his body. What was left was an emotionless ghost of a man, and none of his siblings could figure out a way to drag him out of his own dark hell.
Sarah, who has managed to keep her love for Dev a secret for years, had apparently made some inroads in previous novels to start bringing Dev back to his former self, little by little, and in this novel, she finally comes up with a plan. Watching the Wyatts and Knights pair up, marry and start to have children, Sarah decides she wants to have a child of her own, and with everyone else paired up, she approaches Dev and asks him to be the no-strings father of her child. It takes a good deal of convincing, but after Sarah repeatedly tells him she only wants him as a sperm donor and will ask nothing else from him finally convinces him to agree. So, after waiting for this scene to occur, more disappointment, because Sarah gets drunk, the scene happens entirely off-screen, Sarah doesn’t remember any of it the morning after and gets pregnant on the first try. Really? If this reader was disappointed, I can’t imagine how disappointed followers of this entire series are going to be, since they’ve probably been waiting for these two characters to get together for the better part of a year since the series began.
Thankfully, there is a lot more to this plot than just Sarah and Dev’s changing relationship, and there are a multitude of startling threats made to each of the Wyatt siblings, but from whom, and why? Followers of this series may have a clue, but this reader didn’t, and once we got past Sarah and Wyatt’s part of the story, the suspense part of this novel finally kicked into high gear. Although I didn’t fully understand why the threats were made, who made them, or why, at least I was able to follow that part of the story as it unfolded, and for this reader, it saved the novel from just being about a confusing collection of characters, one of whom is still so troubled he barely even speaks.
Yes, there’s an HEA ending to this novel and the series, but I highly recommend that unlike this reader, you start at the beginning (South Dakota Showdown) and read the novels in this series in the order they were written. My guess is that you’ll enjoy it far more than I did.
As stated, I read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.
Sarah is one of the Knight sisters. Eva and Duke Knight raised all the girls the same but only one, Rachel was their biological daughter. Sarah was the only one to be adopted while the others were fostered. When Sarah was told about her birth parents and why the Knights took her home and adopted her she was devastated. She had been saved from evil then but that evil has resurfaced in her life. Not the best timing. Here she is nine months pregnant and forced by threats from the evil one to hunker down at the Reeves Ranch with Duke, her sisters, Grandma Pauline and the Wyatt brothers. Her sisters were all either married to or living with a Wyatt brother. Duke had high hopes Sarah would be the lone standout. Nope. She wanted to have a baby, her own flesh and blood to love so she talked Dev Wyatt into giving her that baby. She told him she planned to raise the baby on her own but hoped in the end Dev would step forward and be in the baby’s life and maybe in hers too. First this danger had to be addressed.
Dev Wyatt was saved from his father, Ace Wyatt, head of the biker gang the Sons of the Badlands and the brutal life he was subjected to there by Ace. His older brother Jamison got him and all his brothers out of their father’s clutches and out of the biker camp. Dev was the first of his brothers to face Ace again after their escape. He had been a police officer and had the false confidence he could arrest Ace on his own. The result of that mistake left Dev nearly beaten to death by his father and having to give up police work because of his injuries. Dev ended up running his Grandma Pauline’s ranch and he is satisfied with that but his confidence in himself was shattered and he was a broken man. His rise from that broken man could be attributed to his family and the Knight family, especially Sarah Knight. Maybe that’s why he agreed to father a baby with Sarah. Now that evil and danger are breathing down their necks and Sarah is so close to giving birth to their son Dev knows he needs to step away from the past and become the man he needs to be.
Close Range Christmas by Nicole Helm is the sixth book in Ms. Helm’s Badland Cops series. This has been an exciting series. Each Wyatt has his baptism by fire along with one of the Knight girls by his side. This is Dev Wyatt and Sarah Knight’s story. I loved how Sarah stayed strong and helped Dev come back from the injuries inflicted on him by his evil father and helped further his confidence in himself through the years. She was the foundation to his enlightenment and love. There is lots of suspense and action in this story. I liked the surprises along the way and the end results.
Let me just start by saying that I don’t want to leave this review. The reason I don’t want to leave the review is that once I do, this series is over and I’m terribly sad about that. I LOVE the Wyatt brothers, and I’m not gonna lie, I’ve been WAITING for Dev’s story the entire series. Ms. Helm definitely made it worth the wait.
Sarah Knight is independent, sassy, kind-hearted, and clearly in love with Dev Wyatt. She has been since she was a teenager, but Dev has closed himself off to the world since his ‘accident’ AKA the time his father beat him so badly he nearly killed him.
Dev Wyatt spiraled into a bad place after he was attacked by his father, the leader of the Sons of the Badlands. He was saved by someone he least expected, but he knew eventually there would be a price to pay. He didn’t expect it to come due the moment he realized he wanted to be a father to the baby he’d made with Sarah.
Nine months pregnant and ready to deliver at any time, Sarah is ecstatic to be making inroads on Dev’s heart, until the notes start to arrive. As always happens with the Wyatt brothers, the notes tell them that Ace isn’t done with them, even from beyond the grave.
As an amputee, and someone who dragged around a damaged leg for years before the amputation, I really felt for Dev through all six books. There is rarely ever a time during that journey where you don’t feel like you’re a burden to the people around you, or that your family has to ‘carry’ you during that time, so you work that much harder to prove you can do it yourself, even at the expense of extreme pain. Dev’s emotional wounds from what he went through were there, but I thought the author did a great job of working through them to get him to see the truth of the matter. Sarah loved him and he deserved that love, even if his last name was Wyatt.
All of the women in this series are strong women who defend the man they love rather than cower behind them. The best one of all, though? Grandma Pauline. We could all learn a thing or two from that lady, and I dare you not to smile during the scenes where she takes control. This book especially reminded me just how strong an 80-year-old ticked off grandma can be!
If you only choose one intrigue series to read this year, read A Badlands Cops series and you won’t regret it! I was so excited to see that Nicole was writing a spin-off series based on the tactical team from this series, so I can keep up my addiction to her characters.