Review: strong start,  choppy finish
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 07 17, 2010
Starts off repressed and passionate enough, and I liked that both men were quite inexperienced, one of them having never had any sexual contact with a man previously. I liked Ren, the 22 yo ranch hand, who knows he is gay but is scared to tell his step father, the only family he has. And initially l liked Cade, the scarred deputy, who had as many scars on his soul as he did on his face. I had petty problems - I wished that there weren't so many names starting with C in the book, which seemed unnecessarily confusing.But it got repetitious and too melodramatic and then all sorts of weird things happened at the end. I thought that culprit who did the sabotage was given way too easy a break over the final act of violence, and that Cade was too weak/doubtful, having been too strong earlier. Ren appeared to grow as a person but no one else did, and that ultimately lead this book to be a just okay for me.