ARC Review: Taming the Country Star by Margo Bond Collins

Taming the Country Star is a Hometown Heroes novella by Margo Bond Collins. This book was short and sweet, and a light and easy read. This is a "red hot" Bliss title from Entangled and does feature more of the physical aspects of the relationship between the characters than their usual Bliss books. I would keep that in mind if you are looking for a clean read with closed door scenes only. Kylie Andrews had been trying to forget Cole Grayson since she spent time with him in Mexico before she found out who he really was. That is hard to do when he is a huge country star. When he shows up in town for a concert, she figures that she won't run into him. But when her best friend wins front row seats to his concert and drags her along, they end up making eye contact and are drawn to each other just as they were before. Cole let her get away once before, but he isn't willing to let that happen a second time. But can he convince her to give him a shot despite his fame, or will she run from him again?

I liked Cole and Kylie. Cole was sweet and determined. I liked his playful and fun side, and I loved that he didn't give up on Kylie. He had continued to think about her all that time and made sure that he let her know that he was going to fight for a chance with her. Kylie was harder to warm up to for me. Yes she was blindside by his fame and by pictures taken by the paparazzi, but she also refused to get even his last name when they first met. She didn't want to know about him, and then was made that she didn't know about him. It was pretty irritating that she would react the way she did, when he had tried to tell her but she wouldn't let him. I did like the chemistry between them, and I thought that they got along great. But their relationship was pretty rushed considering that they had only spent a bit of time together and it was in the past. Things progressed rather quickly in this story and it wasn't as believable as I had hoped.

I do think that the length really hurt how real their relationship was, and I think that had we been given some more or seen more of them dating that this would have worked better. But they were already saying I love you after only a few days of being reacquainted and he was talking about relocating there when he wasn't traveling. It was just too much too quickly for me. By the time I had warmed up to Kylie and got behind them having a chance, things were rapidly getting serious. I also felt that while this one was sweet and had a happy ending that things were pretty predictable. While the characters were great together there really wasn't anything new or different about this one. I would give this one a shot if you are looking for a short and sweet second chance love story, but if you are looking for something deeper and more established I might steer clear on this one. I am interested to read more from Margo Bond Collins though, especially something a bit longer to see if it was just the length that bothered me with this one.

**ARC Provided by Publisher**

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