Wild Horses by Claire McEwen (Excerpt, review and GIVEAWAY) GFT

Wild Horses

by Claire McEwen

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GENRE: Contemporary western

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BLURB:

This wild stallion can't be tamed.

Todd Williams is still the naive idealist he was in college. Only now he's endangering lives—Nora Hoffman's to be exact. Nora hasn't seen Todd since he decided that saving the rain forest was more important than their relationship. Until the night she's nearly crushed by the stampede he causes. Now Todd is determined to make amends, for everything.

She may not agree with his methods, but even Nora can't deny the importance of his fight to save the wild horses. With the attraction between them still sizzling and the fate of the horses in the balance, Nora must decide just how much she's willing to risk.

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EXCERPT


How was it possible that Todd had the power to make her crazy after all these years? She was a rational person. She always had been—except when it came to him.

He said he’d changed, but he was still the clueless rich kid who’d never had to struggle to put a roof over his head.

Nora took a deep breath of the clean air and let it out slowly. She just wanted all of her feelings about him to be gone. To live her life without the burden of her old, dusty love for him. Because, despite his ignorance, despite their differences, he still haunted her.

She kept the memories at bay during the daytime—she’d had years of practice at that. But at night he came to her in dreams so vivid that she woke in the morning genuinely shocked to open her eyes and find him not there.

And now he was here, as opinionated and idealistic and idiotic as ever. The guy she’d dreamed of, who’d never dreamed of her. And somehow she would have to figure out how to keep going forward and living her life, knowing Todd wasn’t just in her dreams anymore. He was in the machine shop in town, and at a ranch down the road. He was here in her hometown, judging her and finding her lacking.

Dreams were easy. They faded in the daylight. Reality was a lot more difficult.


Buy links:

Amazon 
Barnes & Noble
Harlequin


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AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Claire McEwen lives by the ocean in Northern California with her husband, son and a scruffy, mischievous terrier. When not dreaming up new stories, she can be found digging in her garden with a lot of enthusiasm but, unfortunately, no green thumb. She loves discovering flea-market treasures, walking on the beach, dancing, traveling and reading, of course!

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GIVEAWAY




a Rafflecopter giveaway
The tour dates can be found here


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My review:

4 out of 5 stars

Wild Horses by Claire McEwen is the first book in the ‘Sierra Legacy’ series and follows Nora Hoffman, who has been hired by the Department of Range Management to study the environmental impact of wild horses on the native plant populations of a region of the Eastern Sierras.  Her traumatic re-introduction to Todd Williams reminds her of the difficult decisions made in their shared past, and discovering that their intense attraction has not fizzled out makes it even more difficult to deal with the fact that they are on opposite sides of Todd’s struggle to rescue wild mustangs.  Each will have to decide whether scars of the past will prevent them from finding a future together.

This contemporary romance does a great job of presenting the complexities surrounding the impact of development on the environment and the delicate balance of the ecosystem.  The theme of past lovers reunited is enhanced by the changes in the characters as they have matured and follows them as they learn to cope with some of the issues from the past.  This is an enjoyable sweet and sensual romance that touches on several serious topics, including PTSD and the difficulties of living with abuse and unethical role models, and deftly lays the framework for other stories to follow.  I enjoyed getting this glimpse of the land and learning more about the issues surrounding the plight of the wild horses that are trying to eke out an existence in a rapidly decreasing range.

A copy of this title was provided to me for review