Swallow Your Fear by Karley Brenna was pitched to me on social media as an ultra-spicy dark romance with cowboys. Now, I’m not normally all-in on the cowboy romance thing, but sometimes they’re fun, and it seemed like a good change of pace. Not to mention it’s a little unusual, although not unheard of, to find dark romance and cowboys together in the same book. Normally cowboy romances skew a little more towards the romantic comedy subgenre, so I was intrigued.
Booker’s best friend lost the deed to their ranch in an irresponsible bar bet, and Booker will stop at nothing to get it back. Brynne is left with nothing when she finds out her piece-of-shit boyfriend, the same guy who won the deed, is cheating on her. She moves to a hotel room, where a masked man appears and demands that she come to live on his ranch. Without many options available to her, she follows him. Booker thinks that Brynne is the key to getting that deed back, but as events unfold, his plan reveals a darker underbelly behind who stole the deed.
The whole plot is more than a little far-fetched. The author is trying to find a reason for these two characters to be forced together, but it doesn’t particularly come together in a way that makes sense. By the middle of the book, which is short, Brynne and Booker have never had an actual conversation and now they’re supposedly falling in love.
The plot events and the character development feel rushed, and it leads to a book that doesn’t evoke the usual investment in the character’s journey. I found myself not particularly caring about these two or their happily ever after.
If you are looking for dark and spicy cowboys, go with Pam Godwin’s Trails of Sin series instead. The writing is much better. Swallow Your Fear has sort of a plug-and-play feel, like the author picked some tropes out of a hat and put them into a basic dark romance outline. There is nothing original within these pages, and at the end of the story, you may find you know very little about the characters and what they’ve been up to.
While the story was undeniably cheesy and underdeveloped, it was still fun and fast-paced. The spice was certainly present, and definitely the strong point of this book. Reading Swallow Your Fear was an entertaining way to pass an afternoon, just for the spice and the hate reading alone. The rest could use some work. There are better options out there for dark romance readers and cowboy enthusiasts alike.
Writing: 1.5
Spice: 4
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