Overall Grade: A
Tropes: enemies to lovers; hate to love; cowboy; opposites attract; small town; boss/employee (owner/foreman of the ranch)
Jessica Peterson seemed to have cornered the market on intelligent, spicy romance set in the Carolinas. Whether she writes chefs, romance writers, farmers, lux resort owner siblings, or bonds people, she finds a way to infuse romance tropes with deep issues. When she announced her foray into cowboy romance, this reader was excited because I knew she would put her storytelling stamp on this genre. And she did this beautifully in the first book of her newest series, Lucky River Ranch, Cash. What Jessica Peterson didn’t know, through the scope of Mollie and Cash’s wild journey of hate to love, was her impressive ability to capture the trauma of divorce and death in the lives of the children of divorced couples. Cash provided an apt mirror of my own story; this capacity for storytelling leaves me wanting more stories from Jessica Peterson.
Peterson’s newest book, Cash, is spicy, perfectly paced, and engaging. Mollie and Cash’s immediate chemistry is the initial draw to the story. Their meet cute when Cash assumes Mollie’s a spoiled socialite who turned her back on her father, sets up the emotional tether between these two. As Mollie moves between grief and ire and grief and loyalty, you can’t help but champion the coupling of Mollie and Cash. From the start of this story, Peterson held me in the thrall of her story. It’s funny, it’s tear-invoking, and it’s sweet. By the end of Cash, you will be hoping for a short time until the next book of the series, Wyatt, because the other characters in the story are just as compelling and engaging as Mollie and Cash.
There is so much more to this new series from Jessica Peterson. I love a cowboy romance, but I’m sure she will be one of my favorite authors of this subgenre of romance.
In love and romance,
Professor A
Professor Romance 