Blurb:

From USA Today bestselling author Willow Aster comes a heartfelt second-chance romance about a cowboy and a single mom wrangling their tragic past into hope for the future on a proud Wyoming ranch.

A car accident on prom night changes everything for eighteen-year-old Maverick Harrington. In a flash, he loses two best friends: one who dies in the crash, the other who carries the blame. Finding hate easier than grief, Maverick’s heart slowly hardens. Now twelve years later, he runs Harrington Ranch, bearing the family name on his shoulders and wearing the past like a brand on his heart.

Iris Sullivan didn’t have the sense to leave Ironwood, where loyalty is law. She’s raised her son in the same town that turned its back on her, surviving on stubborn resilience as a single mother. When a golden opportunity takes her back to Harrington Ranch, she comes face-to-face with the man who once said she was dead to him. But forced proximity has a way of weakening defenses.

As old secrets and new sparks ignite, Maverick starts to see the woman behind the whispers—and the twelve-year-old boy whose legacy he can’t ignore.

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Amazon: https://amzn.to/4cXjMY

Narrated by: Sean Masters & Chloe Ryan

Visit Willow Aster’s website for buy links, or search Savage Heart by Willow Aster on Amazon.

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Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3OmYj22

*****

Review:

*could be minor spoilers ahead but it’s a romance so some of this is kind of a gimmee*

If romances where one little conversation would fix a lot of things isn’t your thing, then this is not for you. I can understand where a lot of these people are coming from, and their reactions to different moments from the past. But I really wish that at least the parents had more sense in how they reacted to a deadly car crash. Especially one involving an 18 year old girl they know and love. Maybe not at first, it had to have been devastating, but in the years that followed …. ALL of those people needed to see a therapist! But it also makes them real because I’m sure none of us would have handled such a thing very well. And Aster delivers it in a way that has my heart going out to all of them.

Because I knew when I saw this blurb months ago that this one would be a heartbreaker. And whew was it. But I gotta say, for everything these people put Iris through, she forgave pretty easily. I mean, I can understand her wanting to move on but … ugh! Her life was absolutely AWFUL and yet she powered thru. Maturing into a good person and a good mother, putting up with a lot to raise her kid. Maverick especially needed to do some serious groveling 🙂

I don’t usually like flashbacks (it’s a personal thing, nothing inherently wrong with them) but Aster does a good job of sprinkling them throughout the story. We’re only given the pivotal moments and at a point where it makes sense. And I enjoyed those little glimpses of who these friends were growing up, before tragedy tore them apart. I kinda wish we’d gotten more because there is just so much to unpack there and I would have loved to have more of their friendship.

I can always count on Aster to deliver the feels and she does it again. I’m excited to see where she takes us with the Harringtons (not really many hints which is unusual for a series) and to get to see more of this Wyoming ranch family.