I continue in my nostalgic pursuit of finding category romance. In this case, I read Nicole Helm, an author whose longer-form contemporary romance I enjoyed. And … nope. It wasn’t terrible, except for one puerile bit, but it also isn’t going to send me running to read more of this category. It didn’t help that I came in at #6: there were A LOT of previous book couples, with convoluted family histories, fostered, biological, and adopted, AND, it appears, six? seven? brothers from one ranch marrying the various sisters from the neighbouring one. Yeah, it was Seven Brides for Seven Brothers without the humour, music, or, well, the fun. Without overburdening my poor readers with the endless backstory, let’s give it over to the blurb for some plot and character filler:

Dev Wyatt’s worst fear has come true. Someone from the Wyatts’ dangerous past is stalking his family—and his best friend, Sarah Knight. When she asked Dev to help her have a child, Sarah did not expect her pregnancy would place her in danger, but now Sarah must take shelter on the Wyatt ranch. As she and Dev battle escalating threats, will they survive long enough to become a family?

Um, blurb-foiler: this sounds like it has forced-proximity potential. Au contraire, the Wyatt ranch is peopled with a gazillion brothers, their wives, children, and pets. The sexy times, given Sarah is nine months pregnant (not what we see on the cover), days from her due date, are strictly closed-bedroom-door and sparse, which is a-okay by me. As for the mini-village living together, with a grandmother to boot, I did not even try to figure out who’s who and who’s with who, or who begat who.

As we saw with Helm’s longer contemporary romances, she can strike the right romance notes, which is why the only part I enjoyed was the equal parts antagonism and affection between Dev and Sarah. For example, Dev’s opinion when Sarah badgers him to help her get pregnant: “He took a swig of beer then scowled at her. ‘Of course I’m avoiding you, Sarah. You’ve lost your mind and I’m tired of you trying to drag me into it.’ He didn’t have to look at her to know she would have raised her chin at that.” While I appreciated the nod to romance’s heroine-chin, while Sarah may have chin, she is as stupid as a bag of rocks. Waddlingly pregnant and enormous, when danger comes, she ignores contractions and refuses to move to town, closer to the hospital. She’s always trying to get out and about and do chores? She interferes and expresses what she mistakenly thinks is bravado, but it only puts everyone else in danger. Helm was aiming to portray a strong woman, but she portrayed a foolish, foolhardy one, without the cuteness whither angels fear to tread. Finally, the villain, who shows up at the end, is mere caricature, the only thing missing are twirling moustaches and some railroad tracks and rope. Given Sarah’s dum-dum, she’d be on those tracks, brandishing a kitchen knife, in no time. Dev, in the meanwhile, has a serious case of inferiority complex in comparison to his alphamen-brothers and suffers from “I don’t deserve her” syndrome. Buddy, if she doesn’t get everyone killed, you deserve her … Miss Austen and I agree, sadly Close Range Christmas was “downright labour,” Emma.

Nicole Helm’s Close Range Christmas is published by Harlequin Books. It released in October 2020 and may be found at your preferred vendor. I received an e-galley, from Harlequin Books, via Netgalley, for the purposes of this review.

Who are Dev and Sarah? What is going on with and around each of them? Who are the Wyatt brothers? Who is Ace? What do we learn about Sarah and AW? Why does Sarah have to leave her home I got so caught up in this book when the first note from AW showed up! Who is AW? What changes do we see in the characters? What deal is struck and how does it change? Read to see why this story had me having a hard time putting it down. Suspenseful is the one word to describe it, even with a HEA.

Sarah wants a baby but none of the father mess and asks Dev who has always been kinda off on his own. Clearly he isn't interested in being a father but after a couple drinks they have a night together and she ends up pregnant. Closing in on the due date someone from Dev's put him and his families life in danger and Sarah being pregnant is apart of that so now they all must find who is behind everything and stop them.

If you are looking for a fast paced read you'll like this book. While there was plenty going on this wasn't an action packed book more a mystery of who is behind everything and figuring that out because someone from their past is out to get the family. Then there is the added stress of Sarah being very pregnant with the due date pretty close so now her health and the baby is in danger of coming sooner then expected. There is plenty going on to make the readers hooked into seeing what's coming next, when the person is going to strike next. I really enjoyed this book!

Good book. Though this is the sixth and final book in the series, it is the first one I read. The author did a good job of filling in enough of the backstory that I wasn't lost. I do want to go back and read the others.

Dev is the last of the Wyatt brothers who is unattached. He worked in law enforcement until his attempt to arrest his father ended with him nearly beaten to death. Unable to continue his career, Dev feels worthless and keeps everyone at a distance while he works the family ranch. His best friend is Sarah Knight, who works on the ranch next door.

Like Dev, Sarah is the last of the Knight sisters left at home. Her sisters are all married to or living with Wyatt brothers. She is determined, independent, and has loved Dev for years. After watching her sisters start families, Sarah decides she wants a baby of her own. Who else would she choose as the father but her best friend?

I enjoyed the development of the relationship between Dev and Sarah. She was the only one who seemed to be able to get past the walls Dev threw up. She did it through sheer stubborn perseverance, poking and prodding Dev until he did what she wanted. She did the same thing in convincing him to be her "baby daddy." Sarah told Dev that she didn't expect anything of him and that she intended to raise the baby on her own. Though that is what she told him, deep down she hoped that he would want more. Meanwhile, Dev works hard to maintain his distance, which is increasingly difficult after their night together.

Sarah has nearly given up hope when a new threat appears against the Wyatt brothers, and by extension, her sisters. She is near the end of her pregnancy when it all begins, and Dev finds an unexpectedly intense protectiveness kicks in. As the threats intensify, Dev discovers that it is harder to maintain his previous detachment. I loved seeing his walls start to crack and crumble as his need to protect Sarah takes precedence. I also enjoyed seeing Sarah's stubborn independence soften as she faced the reality of the situation. Dev's "aha" moment in realizing his feelings comes when it's almost too late, but love wins the day. There is an awesome scene at the end between Dev and the baby and Sarah. I loved the epilogue and seeing the whole family together.

The suspense of the story was good. With their father dead, there is a great deal of confusion and worry over who sent the first threatening note. I ached for Dev, who figured it out because it added to his feelings of failure. Each successive threat ramps up the tension as the danger intensifies. There were a couple of unexpected twists, including one that involved Sarah. When the final confrontation came, I was glued to the pages as Dev faced down their foe. The ending was a nail-biter, especially with Sarah's situation. I loved Grandma Pauline and her feisty determination.

An action-packed story from start to finish. A band of brothers who were raised by an unbalanced man until the oldest saved them and they went to live with their grandmother. Their scars live on, molding them into the men they are.

They work closely with a neighboring ranch family to help each other out. The sisters from that ranch are matched up with the brothers for a confusing group of characters. I found focusing on the storyline easier than trying to figure out all the relationship matchups. That is my one complaint, the large cast of characters gets lost in the storyline. Still an enjoyable and quick read.

I received a free ARC eBook from Net Galley and the publisher in exchange for my honest opinions.

This is the first book in this series that I read and I will say that I enjoyed it so much! I am going back and reading the other five and this one again simply because I felt I needed everyone else's stories as well. You can easily read this on its own though.

Dev was beaten by his family and has had to learn to live life differently. His outlook on his life is what many people who suddenly find themselves crippled. He works the ranch and figures that is all there will be. Sarah, is his best friend and works on the ranch next door.

Sarah wants a baby and convinces Dev to help her with that. Sarah was so great! She just pushed her way into Dev's life and decided she was going to give him things he didn't think he could have regardless of how much he pushed her away. She told him she was going to raise their child alone but always hoped that he would step up and be the man they needed. The man that she knew was always still in there.

The suspense was so good! All in all this book made me want to read the others as this is the end of the series. I need all the backstories now. It has also made me a Nicole Helm reader!

Let me start by stating that had I known that this novel was the conclusion of Nicole Helm's Badlands Cop series, I would never have requested an advance reader copy of this title from Netgalley--not because of the author, who writes well, but because I'd only read the first book in the series, and that was almost a year and more than 200 novels ago. Absolutely nothing about this novel or the two families featured in the series was at all familiar, and since there are so many couples who were already featured in previous novels I haven't read, I spent 90% of the this novel trying to figure out who was married to whom and which of the two families they belonged to--even though the author did include a cast of characters at the beginning. For these reasons and several others, I cannot in good conscience give this novel more than a 3-star rating.

The main characters in Close Range Christmas are Sarah Knight and Dev Wyatt, apparently the last two unmarried members of both families. Sarah is one tough cookie, fiercely independent, and most definitely crazy about Dev Wyatt. Dev is the son of Ace Wyatt, head of the Sons of the Badlands MC, an abusive, hard-hearted and evil man, who, a year and I don't know how many novels ago, came very close to beating Dev to death. The physical and emotional damage he inflicted has left Dev with a painful limp, any chance of being the cowboy he wanted to be as shattered as his body. What was left was an emotionless ghost of a man, and none of his siblings could figure out a way to drag him out of his own dark hell.

Sarah, who has managed to keep her love for Dev a secret for years, had apparently made some inroads in previous novels to start bringing Dev back to his former self, little by little, and in this novel, she finally comes up with a plan. Watching the Wyatts and Knights pair up, marry and start to have children, Sarah decides she wants to have a child of her own, and with everyone else paired up, she approaches Dev and asks him to be the no-strings father of her child. It takes a good deal of convincing, but after Sarah repeatedly tells him she only wants him as a sperm donor and will ask nothing else from him finally convinces him to agree. So, after waiting for this scene to occur, more disappointment, because Sarah gets drunk, the scene happens entirely off-screen, Sarah doesn't remember any of it the morning after and gets pregnant on the first try. Really? If this reader was disappointed, I can't imagine how disappointed followers of this entire series are going to be, since they've probably been waiting for these two characters to get together for the better part of a year since the series began.

Thankfully, there is a lot more to this plot than just Sarah and Dev's changing relationship, and there are a multitude of startling threats made to each of the Wyatt siblings, but from whom, and why? Followers of this series may have a clue, but this reader didn't, and once we got past Sarah and Wyatt's part of the story, the suspense part of this novel finally kicked into high gear. Although I didn't fully understand why the threats were made, who made them, or why, at least I was able to follow that part of the story as it unfolded, and for this reader, it saved the novel from just being about a confusing collection of characters, one of whom is still so troubled he barely even speaks.

Yes, there's an HEA ending to this novel and the series, but I highly recommend that unlike this reader, you start at the beginning (South Dakota Showdown) and read the novels in this series in the order they were written. My guess is that you'll enjoy it far more than I did.

As stated, I read an advance reader copy of this novel. The opinions expressed are my own.

Close Range Christmas by Erica Helm is a romantic thriller. It is the last book in the series about the Wyatts and I have enjoyed each book! This book focuses on Dev, the brother that was beaten so badly by his father and left for dead. Dev who had to learn to walk again and continue life as a crippled man. He truly believed that he was not worth much and just worked the ranch. His best friend was Sarah Knight. She worked on the next ranch over and each helped the other out with the chores.

Sarah really wants a baby and convinces Dev to help make that happen. Now pregnant, there is a new danger to the Wyatt families and Sarah is involved as her true parentage comes out. The families work together to keep everyone safe and to thwart the newest threat.

I loved how the story ended, with all the twists and turns. I enjoyed how Sarah pushed her way into Dev’s life despite his efforts to keep her apart from him. I really enjoyed Close Range Christmas by Erica Helm and am sorry to read the end of the series.

Let me just start by saying that I don't want to leave this review. The reason I don't want to leave the review is that once I do, this series is over and I'm terribly sad about that. I LOVE the Wyatt brothers, and I'm not gonna lie, I've been WAITING for Dev's story the entire series. Ms. Helm definitely made it worth the wait.

Sarah Knight is independent, sassy, kind-hearted, and clearly in love with Dev Wyatt. She has been since she was a teenager, but Dev has closed himself off to the world since his 'accident' AKA the time his father beat him so badly he nearly killed him.

Dev Wyatt spiraled into a bad place after he was attacked by his father, the leader of the Sons of the Badlands. He was saved by someone he least expected, but he knew eventually there would be a price to pay. He didn't expect it to come due the moment he realized he wanted to be a father to the baby he'd made with Sarah.

Nine months pregnant and ready to deliver at any time, Sarah is ecstatic to be making inroads on Dev's heart, until the notes start to arrive. As always happens with the Wyatt brothers, the notes tell them that Ace isn't done with them, even from beyond the grave.

As an amputee, and someone who dragged around a damaged leg for years before the amputation, I really felt for Dev through all six books. There is rarely ever a time during that journey where you don't feel like you're a burden to the people around you, or that your family has to 'carry' you during that time, so you work that much harder to prove you can do it yourself, even at the expense of extreme pain. Dev's emotional wounds from what he went through were there, but I thought the author did a great job of working through them to get him to see the truth of the matter. Sarah loved him and he deserved that love, even if his last name was Wyatt.

All of the women in this series are strong women who defend the man they love rather than cower behind them. The best one of all, though? Grandma Pauline. We could all learn a thing or two from that lady, and I dare you not to smile during the scenes where she takes control. This book especially reminded me just how strong an 80-year-old ticked off grandma can be!

If you only choose one intrigue series to read this year, read A Badlands Cops series and you won't regret it! I was so excited to see that Nicole was writing a spin-off series based on the tactical team from this series, so I can keep up my addiction to her characters.