Wow- this story didn’t gloss over addiction. I loved that she was able to own up to her mistakes, and the realism of her character being blunt and honest while facing her past. Finding romance with the EMT who was such an integral part of her past seemed odd. I would have thought that they both would have a hard time getting past that, but the author pulled it off and it worked.

This was a different look at the small town we’ve grown to love through this series. The pettiness and long memories of small town came through in this book, and not just the cutesy charm of the town.

Two people, damaged emotionally, come together. Can their passion heal their hearts?

Vanessa Logan's life went off the rails years ago. Her parents strict rules combined with her twin's perfect adherence to them made her feel broken, until she actually was. A drug addict, her downward spiral stops when she's arrested for possession. She takes rehab over jail and gets clean, discovering a passion for art in the process. Clean for five years, she finally feels strong enough to return home and try to repair her relationship with her family. Taking a job at the Dalton family's ranch as an art teacher for their fledgling "home for wayward boys", who better to teach the boys about owning your mistakes and moving on to do better? When one of the first people she encounters at the ranch is Jacob Dalton, Vanessa isn't sure she can ever get past her youthful mistakes in this place. Jacob was the EMT who came when she needed help as a consequence of a night she can't remember. Will he see the changes she's made, or does he still see the damaged girl she used to be?

Jacob Dalton's heart has been heavily barricaded since he was 8 years old and saw his best friend die. The barricades went even higher the day another friend died in a helicopter that HE should have been on instead. Seeing Vanessa Logan at his brother's new school takes him back about 10 years to a frightened girl and an emergency call. Is this strong, beautiful woman the same person?

As Jacob is called on to serve as a classroom monitor for Vanessa's art classes, he is impressed first by her beauty, then by her acceptance of each of the boys in her classes. When their passion explodes, leading to pregnancy, can they both open their hearts to the possibility that maybe they're good for each other?

I liked this story a lot. Vanessa came back to town stronger than she's ever been, and yet, still, all her family sees is the druggie she used to be. I was so sad for her when she announces her pregnancy to her parents and sister, only to have her mother jump down her throat about whether she's taking drugs still. Granted, she hadn't ever let them in on her struggle, or her victory in getting clean, but I completely cheered when she told them off and left. They needed to bear some of the blame for her eventual downfall. And Jacob, oh, Jacob was so hurt - some of it at his own hand, but some due to circumstance. He needed Vanessa to show him the hero he was deep down.

This book will appeal to romance readers who like a bit of cowboy flair. I liked it because Maisey Yates wrote it.

How much do the scars of our past affect our current relationships?
Vanessa Logan has been mentioned in past books. Her twin Olivia was the perfect child while Vanessa was the one who descended into drugs, alcohol, and debauchery eventually leaving home when she was a teen. Five years ago, she managed to pull herself into sobriety and now she's back in Gold Valley working with at risk kids.
On the other hand, Jacob Dalton is burying his own guilt from spending the day in bed with a one-night stand while his friend covered a wildfire shift and died. He's using alcohol. His family are the ones who set up the camp for the kids and he's being pulled in to just be in the classroom so that the teen boys don't decide that Vanessa is fair game.
One night, Jacob and Vanessa are each dealing with their own dragons and hook up. Neither is very proud of themselves but it does lead them to opening up with each other about their past. It also leads to them being linked in ways that they never expected.
I... didn't love the last half of the book. And I can't articulate why. Possibly because Major Plot Point (MPP) came out of left field for me. More because MPP made it so that everything was fast forwarded and I like a little more relationship development in most of my books.

Three stars
This book came out July 30th
Follows Cowboy to the Core
ARC kindly provided by Harlequin and NetGalley
Opinions are my own

Lone Wolf Cowboy will inspire you to cherish every moment! I dived into this book the moment I saw firefighter - enough said. Jacob Dalton is still reeling from a huge loss, but a former rescue comes back into his life and just might be the thing he needs to remember that he's not really living. Maisey Yates always knows the right heart strings to pull and she definitely knocked it out of the park with this one!

Lone Wolf Cowboy is an emotional love story that will really tug at your heartstrings. Yates takes a realistic and compassionate look at addiction and interweaves a story of recovery with a romance.

I think this was my favorite Maisey Yates book so far. The emotional journey of Vanessa and Jacob was both heartbreaking and heartwarming. While Vanessa has found the tools to move on with her life, Jacob is still mired down by guilt and sadness. Their relationship was filled with more lows than highs, to begin with, but I think that’s what made this book such a page turner for me.
It’s always nice to revisit the characters from previous books, as well, and see how different or similar former impressions are when they aren’t the main couple. I found that I liked one hero more but a past heroine less!
I highly recommend this book, My thanks to Netgalley for the advance copy. I voluntarily read and reviewed it, and all opinions are my own.

LONE WOLF COWBOY is the seventh full-length novel in Maisey Yates series, Gold Valley. It’s a series that I’ve followed and loved for years, yet my feelings are quite mixed about Vanessa and Jacob. This was a difficult book for me to read, there are triggers, several possible ones in fact, that will have an effect on some readers. The expected happy ending is more like a hard-fought battle for both Vanessa and Jacob for differing reasons. In many ways, the worst villains in this story are themselves, their memories of what was and cannot be changed. They have both hit rock bottom and are clawing their way back up, at different levels, for far different reasons.

I had to set this book aside and walk away for a bit, several times. LONE WOLF COWBOY is an emotional journey toward healing, self-forgiveness and discovering that someone you love finds you just as lovable, even when you are at your worst. And, believe me, Vanessa and Jacob often brought out the worst in each other – still, they also acknowledged the good as well.

Their inner dialogues were, at times, repetitious to the point of skimming past “hearing” the same inner thoughts and guilts or “therapy speak” again. Unfortunately, I didn’t like either Vanessa nor Jacob very much, and that never changed. I believe their story had to be told, there are people who need to hear or identify with it. But it was not my favorite story of this series, even though I think it’s a necessary one.

In the end, LONE WOLF COWBOY is a good story, and my rating reflects that. It’s one of those novels that will have high appeal for some readers and not so much for others. Simply being frank here. My belief is simple — only you know if you enjoy a story, and to know that you have to read it for yourself. My opinion? It’s a good story that had to be told and fits within this series. I’m not going to love every couple, and I shouldn’t have to in order to acknowledge that their story has worth.

*I received an e-ARC of this novel from the publisher via NetGalley. That does not change what I think of this story. It is my choice to leave a review giving my personal opinion about this book.*

LONE WOLF COWBOY releases on July 30, 2019.

Well. This was the first Maisey book where I thought about DNFing and yet somehow I couldn’t stop reading it.

Vanessa and Jacob are decent enough characters. They’ve both got a lot of baggage and that defines most of how they act. I didn’t see the chemistry between them at all and felt like it was a weird leap from strangers to lovers to engaged. I do really like this family and enjoyed seeing the other characters.

Plot wise, it was very repetitive. There’s more inner monologue than dialogue: for her it’s drug use, him the deaths of two friends. It’s basically all either of them thinks about and that made a lot of that book a struggle for me.

Overall, it was sort of like a car wreck I couldn’t look away from. I never felt fully invested in these characters, yet I still needed to know how it ended.

FYI: talk of underage drinking, heavy drug use, miscarriage, and having sex while blacked out

**Huge thanks to HQN for providing the arc free of charge**

Lone Wolf Cowboy by Maisey Yates is the seventh book in the Gold Valley series. Each book while based in the same setting and with many of the same characters has different main characters and can be read as standalones. The stories do tend to have cowboys and horses however.

Vanessa left home as soon as she could. She was not the perfect child and never could do anything right, so she stopped trying. She ended up spending years being an addict and going downhill on a never ending spiral. Being arrested and put into rehab started her next chaper and she worked hard to start her life again. She is back at Gold Valley working as an art therapist at the Dalton’s new school.

Jacob Dalton is reclusive, a loner. He has worked as an EMT and as a wildland firefighter, but right now he has been pulled into helping Gabe with his new school. His newest neighbor is the art teacher and he has a case of lust with her. It is surprising or maybe not what happens next. Jacob and Vanessa have decisions to make.

Lone Wolf Cowboy by Maisey Yates ended well. I liked Jacob and grew to like Vanessa. I have to admit, I didn’t at first because she was a bit preachy, but I grew to understand she needed to explain so much to others to help her, help others. Lone Wolf Cowboy by Maisey Yates was a hot, fast read!

Will appear on Romance Reviews Today website in early August. http://romrevtoday.com/

LONE WOLF COWBOY – Maisey Yates

A Gold Valley Novel

HQN Books

ISBN: 978-1-335-47464-3

August 2019

Contemporary Romance



Gold Valley, Oregon – Present Day



Vanessa Logan left Gold Valley as soon as she turned eighteen because she could no longer try to live up to her parents’ expectations. Unlike her twin sister, Olivia, Vanessa was always a “failure” and a “bad daughter.” She even proved it when she got pregnant and doesn’t remember doing the deed due to abusing drugs. During the intervening years, life has been difficult for her, but now she’s sober and has found painting as an outlet. To even her own surprise, Vanessa returns to Gold Valley to work as an art teacher for troubled youths at a new school being opened by the Dalton family. Her first day there, she encounters a man from her past: Jacob Dalton. It was Jacob, an EMT at that time, who helped her as she miscarried her baby when she was seventeen.



Of course Jacob remembers Vanessa. He has spent most of his adult life rescuing others, either as an EMT or as a wildland firefighter. Yet, he couldn’t save the one person who mattered: his friend, Clint, who died in a fire and left behind a widow and a little girl. Jacob can see that Vanessa is still troubled by her rocky past, but he admires her for her ability to fight her demons and for using what she’s learned to help others. They’ll be working together at the school, so it’s no wonder they run into one another. Jacob and Vanessa discover they’re attracted to each other, and it soon turns into a fiery passion that might be best forgotten…but it can’t.



LONE WOLF COWBOY is a tale that proves our heroes and heroines don’t have to be perfect for us to grow to care for them. Vanessa couldn’t be as good as Oliva, so instead, she went the other way and “proved” to everyone how bad she could be. But it led to some bad choices, mainly drugs and alcohol. But the reality of an unplanned pregnancy that she didn’t want to admit to, made her finally realize that she needed to get away. No one except Jacob knew about her pregnancy and miscarriage, and coming back—and seeing Jacob again—is like a punch in the gut. She appreciates that he has kept her secret all these years. He just doesn’t know how she ended up pregnant.



Vanessa and Jacob’s instant attraction has them ending up having sex, and both are stunned by their reaction to the other. As they circle around each other trying to assess their feelings, it soon becomes clear that once isn’t enough. They try to keep their fling a secret, but things have a way of coming out. Meanwhile, Vanessa tries to get up the nerve to visit her parents for a possible reconciliation. Will she get the chance? Will their secret fling end up being discovered?



LONE WOLF COWBOY is filled with emotion and redemption for both Vanessa and Jacob. She was the bad girl who left in shame and returns with her head held high. Jacob hasn’t been perfect himself, but is his self-blame for his friend’s death warranted? Their passion for each other will sear the pages of this tale and, as they deal with the fallout of their affair, be prepared to start rooting for them to succeed. Don’t miss LONE WOLF COWBOY, another sizzling tale from Maisey Yates.



Patti Fischer

The characters were deeply flawed with lots of baggage and totally relatable. I received a copy of this for honest review and have not read any of the rest of this series and it was way to pick up and I fell in love with the ranch and all of the characters without feeling like I had to go back and read the others first to understand what was going on and who the characters were which was really nice.

The only thing that bothered me about the book was it was rather redundant about both Vanessa and Jacob’s issues. Many times it relived and repeated their pasts. Also there was a lot of over analyzing everything about the circumstances of their lives done by the characters rather than allowing the reader to come to many of their own thoughts and interpretations. It gets you into their mindset in a way but it is also pretty conflicting as they seem to have such clarity in this but it’s still such a struggle for them to believe what they’re saying. I also like when authors leave a little space for the reader to develop their own thoughts about why characters behave a certain way.

I really liked the way the characters related to the boys on the ranch and I kind of wish there was a little more to that rather than just little pieces that helped develop the relationship between Vanessa and Jacob.

Overall, it was a good read and the pain of the characters was relatable and the writing allowed the reader to feel the emotional roller coaster they endured. I do look forward to reading other books in this series.

LOVE that's the word that best describes my feelings toward this book, really any book by this author I fall in love with. I think it's her writing style and how easily it all just flows together. It's probably her characters as well. Just so much love for this book and her as an author!.

While I did like this one, it's not my favorite. There was a lot of repetitiveness and going over the same subject constantly. What I did like was the growth both characters went through while reading. Vanessa and Logan each have a troubled past, while Vanessa was trying to correct her mistake and reconnect with her family, Logan was still hiding from his. They have an unusual relationship, can they make it or will the past keep them apart?

I always enjoy going back to one of the small towns created by Maise Yates that inhabit the Oregon coast. This time, we’re in Gold Valley with Jacob Dalton—a man who learned hard and easy that life is fickle and fleeting. He’s gruff and grumpy and though his scars aren’t visible, they’re most definitely present. It’s interesting to see how he copes with the loss of a friend, and I appreciated that Ms. Yates didn’t shy away from the “it’s my fault” aspect of his guilt. She also didn’t shy from giving us a decent amount of character growth with Jacob—he had a rocky road, and was sometimes infruriatingly insular in his thinking—but when his feeling began to grow and develop, it felt like all things were possible, and that’s a gift from the author.

Newly returned to Gold Valley, Vanessa Logan was a bit of a wildcard for me. I liked her a lot, and often felt anger on her behalf when she was dealing with family. Like Jacob, Vanessa went through a lot of introspection and that, along with some circluar thought patterns, stalled this book a little for me. However, there was much to admire about Vanessa—the way she picked up and carried on, her strength despite her past being the main ones.

Together, they make a likable couple. Certainly likable enough to push through some of the slower passages, where dialogue is sparse (and I often had to go back to remember what they’d been talking about) and inner monologue is prolific. All in all, Lone Wolf Cowboy is another enjoyable entry in this series—and one that makes me want to keep reading more from the Dalton crew.

Jacob is a sexy man, but is full of guilt. He had to deal with the death of his friends and he can't let himself heal from the lost of his friends.

Vanessa had a hard life, but had found herself and is ready to start life over. That's not to say it is easy, to move back to your home town to face the family you haven't seen in awhile, and start a new job.

When Vanessa and Jacob meet you can feel the chemistry right away, but it was not "in your face". It grew at a fast, yet believable pace. It was defiantly hot and sexy at times. But it also took us on a emotional ride. The story line was easy to follow, character development was perfect.

This story highlight's the real issue that you can find happiness, even life after dealing with a difficult past.

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

Rating 3.5

This had some triggers for me so I'm trying to be fair rate this as best as I can.

Jacob is dealing with a lot of unresolved issues. Death of dear friends that affected his life profoundly and unresolved grief and resolution that lingered and hung around him constantly. He ignores the pain and tries to hobble his way through life.

Vanessa experienced a horrible episode that traumatized her and made her spiral down a deep and dark hole. She suffered in that darkness for years until she was able to pull herself out and start to make something of her life.

But one moment that was seared into the memory of both these sad and flawed characters is when Jacob rescues and saves Vanessa.

Years later Vanessa returns home and is ready to deal with the past and continue healing. Jacob is still struggling but the two reunite and a relationship develops. Each has a lot to resolve and heal from before the two can truly make their relationship work.

I found this a little too depressing of a read. Yes, there is redemption and healing for both, but I found that a lot of repetitive thought and discussions on their "issue". Yes, I know it's part of the story but I think for me personally I would have liked more on the positive parts and points of their lives. I also found it was a slow start and a lot of inner dialogue and it did drag at times. But all in all a nice read.

I received an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I really enjoyed this book and can't wait to read more of this authors work. I highly recommend this author to friends and family alike.

Love love Maisey Yates. After I always read a tough read or in depth read, I grab Maisey Yates. I also love the Gold Valley series. I love Victoria and Jacob's story. So extrememly good. Can't wait for the next one!

I can always read a Maisey Yates book with confidence it will be fantastic. This book is part of a series but can be read without feeling like you are missing something. Jacob Dalton is running from his past. Vanessa Logan is crawling towards hers. Jacob and Vanessa have N unusual relationship. Can they make it work?

I highly recommend this book. It will make you laugh and cry all at the same time.


Thank you Harlequin and Netgalley for Allowing me the pleasure of reading this title for an honest review.

I always enjoy books by Maisey Yates but had some difficulty getting into this one. Maybe it was because Jacob and Vanessa have serious issues that need to be resolved or because they had a love hate relationship in the beginning. The surprise pregnancy seems hard to believe given what happened to her in the past but they work together to overcome their differences. Enjoyable.