Review: Stay with Me

Stay with Me by Heather Slade
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Last year I picked up Heather Slade’s Kiss Me Cowboy, the third book in the Cowboys of Crested Butte series. In all honesty, I wasn’t crazy about it at all. I gave it a three-star rating, but that was rounded up from a two-point-five. I blamed most of my issues with how I had not read the prior books in the series. Due to this, I was willing to give other Heather Slade books a read. I ended up reading The Gift, the fourth book in the Butler Ranch series, and had a slightly better experienced. Again, I felt as though my lack of enjoyment was based upon how I entered the series rather late. When it came to reading Stay with Me, I was a bit more hopeful. I’d read Kiss Me Cowboy, and I was crossing my fingers this would result in a better understanding of the next book.

In all honesty, of the three Heather Slade books I have read thus far, Stay with Me works the best as a standalone novel. I would recommend reading the prior books, especially Kiss Me Cowboy, if you want a full understanding of all the events and references, but this one worked much better as a standalone novel than the prior books I have read by the author. In fact, this one has left me much more willing to read the author’s earlier work – something there was initially a question mark over.

If I’m being completely honest, this one isn’t a full four-star rating. It’s a strong three-point-five that I decided to round up. A small part of me considered rounding it down, but I could not do such a thing when I considered how much more I enjoyed this book when I compared it to Kiss Me Cowboy. While Kiss Me Cowboy was extremely difficult for me to work through, with there being a lot of starting and stopping early in the book, Stay with Me grabbed me from the very start, so much so that I found myself wanting to pick it up whenever I had the chance.

Following on from some of the drama introduced to us in Kiss Me Cowboy, Stay with Me gives us the love story of Jace Rice and Bree Fox. There is plenty of drama surrounding these two, plenty of emotional baggage that needs to be sorted out, and it makes for an extremely gripping read. You’re constantly rooting for their love story, all the while worried about what may come next for them.

I really enjoyed the play between the two characters, the way the relationship developed between the two of them. My only real issue, the reason it isn’t quite a full four-star rating, is that I felt as though the back and forth became a bit repetitive as we worked through the book. It was enjoyable, but towards the end I felt as though it was becoming a bit too much – I just would have liked something a little bit more, for something else to have been thrown in.

Overall, though, this is my favourite of my three Heather Slade books to date.

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