Texas Rose Always by Kay Graykowski

Graykowski always has a light touch with humor and this book, Texas Rose Always, is no exception. She’s made an interesting switch on the whole secret baby plot by introducing a couple, Daisy and Houston who meet up only once a year at the Burning Man Festival. And wouldn’t you know it, but Daisy ended up pregnant and no way to tell Houston since they didn’t exchange real names or cell phone numbers. When they meet up the next year, she hints that she wants something more permanent and he resists her as he does for her her hints for the next several years. And he is adamant that he doesn’t want children. So she keeps silent and finally decides not to return to Burning Man.

And then Daisy, who is really Justus Jacobi, gets the contract in her own business as a landscape architect to pretty up the family ranch where, of course, Houston “Rowdy” Rose is one of the sons. She brings her wonderfully appealing son, Hugh, with her to the ranch where she falls in love with his family and they love her right back. The scenes with her son hanging out with the men no one realizes are really his uncles and grandfather are just so endearing as they swap bits of strange trivia.

Then Rowdy returns and everything becomes clear as to Hugh’s paternity. There are misunderstandings as Rowdy doesn’t react well to not having been informed that he has a son, but it all will eventually reach a HEA.

I found I just couldn’t find too much sympathy for either the H or h. Rowdy’s hangup is that is secretly a great artist but doesn’t want to tell his family because he figures a bunch of ranchers would be fine with his becoming an award-winning winemaker, but wouldn’t love him if they found out that he paints? That’s just not believable, especially when we meet his family who happen to be simply the kindest and most loving people anyone could imagine. It’s not clear where his hangups come from so it’s hard to buy that he could be falling for a woman he meets for one week out of the year and yet he is too much of an emotional coward to even get her phone number. And Justus has hangups because her mother abandoned her and is a selfish witch, but she also had a loving father and stepmother. Yet she couldn’t bring herself to tell Rowdy/Houston that he has a son. She’d prefer to deny her son a father and relatives simply because she can’t find the courage to tell her lover about her son. If he flipped out and didn’t want anything to do with them, that would be tragic, but at least she’d know. Instead she hooks up with him year after year without telling him.

I enjoyed the book, but I found the behavior of the two lead characters so irritating; I just wanted to shake them. I’d take the son and grandparents any day over those two.

I received a free ARC from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.