Is their red-hot reuniontoo good to be true?Broken trust is hard to rebuild.But temptation is even harder to deny… heart fifteen years ago. Their attraction flares as strong as ever—but will long-buried secrets threaten a future with Beth all over again?
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A reunion of temptation! With the kick-off to the newest Texas Cattleman’s Club spin-off series Rags to Riches Maureen Child brings a reunion of first loves back to Royal, TX in THE PRICE OF PASSION! The characters are intriguing and their attraction is quick to reignite.
Camden Guthrie is easy to like. He took off for California years ago after his first love broke his heart, and now he’s returning to start his life anew. He’s done well for himself and wants nothing more than to join the prestigious Texas Cattleman’s Club in his hometown Royal, TX … but he’s going to need the help of the one person he never thought he’d need again.
Beth Wingate was a little harder to like. She is strong and self-assured, but she seems to like to hold a grudge for things she herself precipitated. She eventually lightens up, but her background story wasn’t as complete as I needed it to be to understand her actions back in the day and truly redeem her.
I recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a romance filled with powerful players and ritzy settings as they work towards finding their happily ever afters. I’m looking forward to more in the series!
It’s been a long time since I read a Texas Cattleman’s Club novel. I started reading this series in the 1990s, but when I saw that this one was written by Maureen Child, whose books I usually love, I requested an advance reader copy. This is a second chance at love, poor guy/rich gal, contemporary western romance with plenty of heat, but it saddens me to say that I didn’t love this novel, and the best I can do is give it 3 stars.
Fifteen years earlier, Cam and Beth were high school sweethearts. Beth is the daughter of the old money, privileged Wingate family in Royal, Texas. Cam is a half-Native American cowboy who works on a nearby ranch, the Circle K, along with his parents. Beth and Cam can’t get enough of each other but her wealthy parents don’t approve. Beth is 18, Cam is 19, and when Beth suggests that they slow down, after all, she’ll be leaving for college soon, Cam takes it as the kiss-off he’s been expecting all along.
Within a week or so, Beth is shocked to learn the Cam has married Julie Wheeler, another classmate of theirs, and that the newlyweds have moved to California. She assumed that Cam’s words of love to her were a lie, and that he’d been cheating on her during the entire 3 years they were a couple. She was crushed, but eventually managed to move on with her life, and 15 years later, and still unmarried, she knows that Julie died of cancer two years earlier, and she isn’t at all happy to learn that Cam, now a multi-millionaire, has just bought the ranch he used to work on, and he is back in Royal to stay. When they bump into each other at the bank, both realize that there is still plenty of sizzle between them, but Beth has one very large chip on her shoulder and Cam doesn’t seem to fully understand why, since all along he believed she’d ended their relationship 15 years ago, assuming that “slow down” meant, “we’re over.”
This is a story of wrong assumptions and sexual attraction, but I found Beth to be more than a tad bitchy and bitter, and Cam seemed only to be attracted to her looks and his memories of the heat between them. Beth also still finds Cam’s good looks hard to resist, but where was the love? Where was the romance? At no point did I see common ground or affection between these two main characters, and Beth still is harboring hurt feelings without fully knowing the truth behind Cam’s hasty marriage to Julie. And Beth is in for a major surprise. Will the truth draw them together or tear them even further apart? You’ll have to read his novel to find out, since I don’t do spoilers.
I respect Maureen Child’s ability as a romance writer, but was disappointed by this novel. I think this would have been a far more successful story had the two characters spent more time talking it out rather than locking lips and/or trading barbs whenever they saw each other. It’s not a bad read, but it’s not a great one either–there were simply too many missed opportunities for this reader.
As stated earlier, I read an advanced reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.