"An Unsettled Range (Range #3)"

Review - "An Unsettled Range (Range #3)" by Andrew Grey

Worthy and fine addition to the series

Very Highly Recommended

After walking and hitching for days with little food or water, it's all Liam can do to put one foot in front of the other.  When one driver after another ignores him, he just...collapses where he stands and hopes for a quick ending.  He's vaguely aware when he's lifted up and settled into a truck by two guys.

When he wakes up, he finds he's been rescued by two kind men.  Gay men, like him.  He feels such relief, and then acceptance.  Hope, where he has only had despair.  And he's offered a job by Wally, a vet who is partners with Dakota.  Dakota and Haven own the ranch, and it's a bit of an anomaly - a safe place for a gay ranch hand.

On his second day at the ranch, Liam investigates strange smoke in the air and wanders up on Troy.  Who promptly pulls a gun on him and orders him off his property.  Doesn't make a great impression on Liam, that's for sure.

But the two men run into each other several times, and there is an attraction.  One that Troy fights, because he believes he doesn't deserve to be happy, after ruining his life, and his family's life the way he did.  So he resists the heat he feels for Liam.  Because Liam, he know, he KNOWS, deserves better than him.

When Liam puts himself in jeopardy looking out for Troy, however, a small door opens for Troy.  Maybe, just maybe, there can be something there.

When Dakota and Haven's ranch might be threatened by a mining company looking to use the ranch's water rights, and people from his and Troy's troubled past reappear, will Liam's new-found home be in danger?  Will he and Troy manage to find a life of their own, or will their ghosts overwhelm them?

Andrew Grey has returned to give us more the "Stories from the Range" series, and this one is a winner.  It's always a pleasure to visit with Wally and Dakota, Haven and Phillip, and he's added two memorable guys to the mix here with Liam and Troy.  This is a well told, thoughtful and warm tale of two injured and hurting men who realize there is strength in sharing the load.

Mr. Grey has done what he does so well - created characters who make us think and feel, and put them in situations where they are forced to confront their fears and shortcomings.  But they also come to realize they are not so unlovable after all.  That love is deserved, freely given and received, and that they are, indeed, worthy.

Troy is one of Mr. Grey's strongest characters yet.  So self loathing, but so willing and open to want and need and have, once he gets he deserves it.  And that he has so much to offer.

And Liam - what a sweetheart of a young man.  Hated for what he is, abused, thrown away.  But so much stronger than his father ever gave him credit for.  Bent, but never broken.

These two men were terrific together, and I hope we see more of them as the series progresses. 

I truly cannot say enough about the skill with which Mr. Grey writes about his broken men.  In all of his series, he creates character after character I would love to know.  And I savor every book of his that comes my way.  But I truly love the "Tales from the Range" series.

Great job.

Tom