A Shot of Sultry by Macy Beckett

Title:  A Shot of Sultry

Series:  Sultry Springs book 2

Author:  Macy Beckett

Welcome to Sultry Springs, Texas: where home can be the perfect place for a fresh start.

For West Coast filmmaker Bobbi Gallagher, going back to Sultry Springs is a last resort. But with her career in tatters, a quick trip to her hometown might get her the footage she needs to salvage her reputation. She just can’t let anything distract her again. Not even the gorgeous contractor her brother asked to watch over her. As if she can’t handle filming a few rowdy Texans.

Golden boy Trey Lewis, with his blond hair and Technicolor-blue eyes, is a leading man if Bobbi ever saw one. He’s strong and confident and–much to her delight–usually shirtless. He thinks keeping his best friend’s baby sister out of trouble will be easy. But he has no idea of the trouble in store for him…

Macy Beckett is introducing us to a great series with characters that I find myself falling in love with and rooting for page after page!!  These characters are creating a family bound by love as much as blood and despite their flaws they stick together through the good and the bad.

Since he is Luke’s best friend, Trey Lewis played a big part in book 1, Sultry with a Twist.  We learned about the dysfunction in his family and how that wedge drove him to make his home in Texas instead of Chicago.  This story expands on that relationship and explains further why Trey has adopted the town of Sultry Springs as his extended family.  In spite of his love for the town, he has plans to leave Texas and try to find his own way in a world that he thought he had left behind.  By taking a civilian contracting job in Dubai working security detail for a developer who’s working with the military, Trey can clear his military record and please a father that he has managed to disappoint time and again.

At age 4, Bobbi Gallagher moved from Sultry Springs with her mother and thought there would never be a reason to return.  Now years later she needs a reality show, Sex in the Sticks, to help get her career back on track and a couple of good lookin’ cowboys to play her leading men.  But Bobbi is dealing with resentments that she has aimed at her big brother, Luke, and what she sees as his growing up in his “own redneck version of Easy Street” while she was neglected by their mother and then forced into foster care when she died from an over-dose.  It was interesting to see the 2 sides to the same situation: Bobbi’s resentments versus Luke’s abandonment issues and how its possible to see one life altering event from so many different angles.

Throw together all this personal angst, a red hot attraction that Trey (cowboy #1) and Bobbi cannot seem to deny (and that Luke would wring his friends neck over), a crazy cocky sheriff deputy named Colton Bea (cowboy #2) and two California hippie camera men named Weezus and Bong and let the story unfold!

“Bobbi rolled her eyes and tried to contain a snicker. ‘So far, we’ve got see God, see stars, and forget how to breathe. You make lofty promises, Golden Boy.’ ‘Sure.’ Trey reached one arm behind her and rested it along he the seat back. ‘But I deliver.’ ”  YES… Yes, he does!!!

The end has a nice little twist that I did not see coming and totally LOVED and as any great romance book should – it gave me the Happily Ever After that I long for (and demand)!  I will wait on pins and needles for book 3, Colt’s story, to come out in August 2013 – I can hardly wait!!!

GRADE: A