ARC REVIEW Texas Trouble by Gerry Bartlett

Lone Star Suspense #2, It was nice to pick up on Scarlett's story, it's not imperative that you read the first book to be able to enjoy this one it explains enough of the first one you get all the pertinent information for this story's, mainly just Scarlett's, backstory but then again I've read the first one and really enjoyed it so I would recommend reading it anyways. Ethan's backstory seems pretty massive too and that's probably because he was a secondary character from Gerry's other Romantic Suspense series Texas Heat, which I have not read and still was able to keep up with his story. The other series spills off into this one in the form of Ethan's crazy mother. Similar to recent Catherine Coulter books Gerry has two storylines going in this book that have nothing to do with each other except to give some look as to the characters motivations and "Ah-ha" moment.

Scarlett's story, the main storyline. Scarlett is trying to get over her fear, after her kidnapping and torture at the hands of a madman she has become pretty paranoid. The first step is to remove any and all physical reminders of what he did to her ie. getting a tattoo to cover up the initials carved into her butt. Her progress takes a step backward when she learns the mad man, Leroy Simms, escaped police custody during transit. Scarlett initiates step two to take back her life she accepts a new challenging job, helping open Ethan Calhoun's new bar. Ethan's story which he tries to keep everyone out of is that his crazy momma escaped the looney bin with the help of another completely psychotic patient and now they are bullying him into giving them money and new passports. Ethan think he can get her back to the hospital before the police find her.

Scarlett and Ethan's relationship starts off as friends, the lust is there the attraction is apparent but as she works for him they get to know each other better before taking the next step. I enjoyed the romance side of this story and even though all the men are way overprotective of Scarlett all she wants to do is take charge of her life again even if it means facing Leroy Simms.

Overall, it was a good read, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I liked Scarlett's brother and hope he gets a book in the future. The book was nicely paced and even with the two storylines I didn't have any issues following along it was pretty streamlined on the events.