To Hell You Ride by Julia Talbot | Cat's Release day Review, Excerpt & #giveaway @Dreamspinners @juliatalbot ~ '

Big Roy is a hard-rock miner with a not-so-secret love for the theater, so when he hears a new troupe of actors are coming to the Telluride Opera House to put on a Shakespeare play, he saddles his mule and makes the trek into town to see it. The play doesn’t disappoint, but the beautiful lead actor, Edward Clancy, certainly does. Clancy is rude and arrogant, and Roy figures he’d never have a chance with such a man. He’s wrong, because Clancy needs some entertainment himself, being stuck in a hellish mining town for the long, snowy winter. Come spring, though, Clancy knows he’s going to want to move on, and he thinks Roy will be easy to forget. Then tragedy hits, and Clancy has to rethink his entire life. Can these two strike gold?

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Cat gives this one 5 Meows with a 3 Purr heat index...

I love Julia Talbot westerns but I think this one just won top slot in my book and it's not even a cowboy.

Big Roy is a poor miner, hard worker and very likable.He loves plays and rides his mule a good 2 hours down the mountain at least once a month to Telluride, spends some of his hard earned money on a shave and bath and tickets for the play. It's getting close to winter and the new production is Shakespeare. He doesn't know much about it and the words are strange to him but the man in the tights is gorgeous. Until he meets him to tell him how great he was in the play and the man is extremely rude. He is supposed to give his opinion to his friend at the paper for a review.

Edward Clancy may be beautiful and a talented actor but he is arrogant, rude and when he hears of the review he goes after the big man that slandered his good name.

I loved this story. I loved both characters. I also loved that Roy isn't your average gorgeous sexy man.I even loved Sir Clancy the arrogant! I was immersed in this story from the beginning and read it in one sitting. There is a lot going on and it felt as if I could see it not just reading it. The historical setting was spot on and I felt like I was living in the past. I also loved how the title went from Telluride to To Hell You Ride!

If you like historical settings, plays, actors, enemies to lovers, and some sweet man-love this is for you.

Excerpt...

EVERY SATURDAY during the summer, Big Roy Marsh made his way down from the boardinghouse he lived in, precariously attached to the mountain, all the way down into Telluride. It was a hellacious trip, but he owned his own mule, which made him something of a wealthy man, and he was big and strong enough to keep her too, which made him doubly lucky.

So on Saturdays, Roy climbed on his mule and went to town, stopping first at the livery to stable her, then going on to the barber for a shave and a bath. Roy always brought his own bread and cold meat in his saddlebags so he didn’t have to eat in town, saving his money for what he truly wanted: a night at the Opera House.

Oh, the other miners laughed at Big Roy, they truly did, telling him he was trying to make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, going and getting all cultured, and that they were amazed that the fancy even let Roy in. Sometimes it amazed him too, but he was always clean and always wore his Sunday-go-to-meeting clothes, and his money was as good as anyone else’s, wasn’t it?

Sitting in the dark in the theater, watching the singers and actors and other stage folk, no one even noticed Roy with his scarred hands and his hulking shoulders; no one even cared. A man couldn’t ask for more than that. He surely couldn’t.

Stories that leave a mark. Julia Talbot loves romance across all the genders and genres, and loves to write about people working to see past the skin they're in to love what lies beneath. Julia Talbot lives in the great mountain and high desert Southwest, where there is hot and cold running rodeo, cowboys, and everything from meat and potatoes to the best Tex-Mex. A full time author, Julia has been published by Dreamspinner, All Romance Ebooks, and Changeling Press. She believes that everyone deserves a happy ending, so she writes about love without limits, where boys love boys, girls love girls, and boys and girls get together to get wild, especially when her crazy paranormal characters are involved. She also writes BDSM and erotic romance as Minerva Howe. Find Julia at @juliatalbot on Twitter, or at www.juliatalbot.com "The mountains are calling, and I must go"