Fin­ished Some­one Like You by Leigh Green­wood. This is one of the romances in Greenwood’s Night Rid­ers west­ern series. I had been mean­ing to try his books for a while, and I had the plea­sure of meet­ing Leigh dur­ing RWA Nation­als ear­lier this year. So I picked this one up.

When his father dies and leaves him the fam­ily ranch, Rafe Jerry is forced to return home, even though it means see­ing his step­mother Dolores again — the woman he loved who he found in bed with his father. But to Rafe’s sur­prise, it’s Dolores’ sis­ter Maria who catches his eye. Maria is every­thing that Dolores is not — kind, lov­ing, and self­less — and she helps Rafe run and the ranch and grow closer to his half-brother Luis. But when an old enemy comes to town to set­tle a score with Rafe, it looks like he and Maria will never get their hap­pily ever after …

I’m a sucker for west­ern his­tor­i­cal romances. Seri­ously. I love ‘em. And I enjoyed a lot of things about Some­one Like You — the set­ting, Rafe and Maria, and just that rugged feel that west­erns have to them. I also liked the fact that Rafe was just as inex­pe­ri­enced in the bed­room as Maria was. You don’t often see a vir­gin hero, and it was a nice change of pace.

I did think that Maria let­ting the self­ish Dolores walk all over her for so long was a bit of a stretch, and Rafe and Maria talked about their feel­ings a lit­tle more than I would think two peo­ple in that era would have. But over­all, this is a clas­sic west­ern romance with a lot of good things going for it. Thumbs up.

Up next: Vision in White by Nora Roberts.

Books in my TBR pile: About 14.