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My Review:Title: Underdog
Author: L.A. Witt
Series: In Vino Veritas #4
Published by: Heart Eyes Press
Release Date: September 13, 2022
Format: eARC
Pages: 402
Genres: Contemporary, LGBT, Romance
Source: Heart Eyes Press
Reading Challenges: Lenoreo's 2022 COYER Summer, Lenoreo's 2022 Diversity Reading Challenge
Find it: Goodreads ✩ Amazon
My rating:
Blurb:Life in foster care wasn’t easy. Life after prison? Unforgiving. But I’m determined to stay out of trouble, and I’m gaining a foothold on the closest I’ve ever known to normal.
Then, thanks to a pair of escape artist dogs from the sanctuary where I’ve found work, I cross paths with my boss’s neighbor, Ty Adams. He’s a horse trainer, and winter is his quiet season. It’s also the season when he gets restless and lonely—two things I know all about. He’s not interested in love or romance. I’m just happy someone’s interested in me at all, even if emotions are strictly forbidden.
When we’re not together, I’m thinking about him. When we are together… Well, I’m definitely thinking about what he does to me and what I want to do with him.
As we keep each other warm through the Vermont winter, this feels a lot more than physical. Somehow he soothes my pain, and I wonder if I’m touching something deep inside him too. But Ty won’t let himself love anyone. I never had a chance. And now, with my past closing in, I could lose the one man I hoped I could count on. The one I thought might be different.
When his present and my history collide, is it too much to hope he’ll choose me?
CW: Sick horse and a minor accident involving a horse—no animal deaths or serious injuries/illnesses.
I received a free copy through Heart Eyes Press in exchange for an honest and unbiased review/opinion.
3 stars — This one had a lot of potential, and some definite great parts, but the pacing just didn’t work for me. I think I originally saw myself rating this 3.5 rounded up, and it just kept getting lower as the story dragged out. I will admit that near the end I flipped forward just to get answers, and then came back and skimmed (gasp) over some steamy scenes. *sigh* Maybe it was me?
The thing is, both Ty and Landon are pretty likeable heroes. I felt for everything that Landon had gone through and was going through. It was a really unique story, with a VERY damaged hero who just could not see his worth because of the way society had judged him and refused to change that judgement. I 100% love that Ms. Witt took on this topic, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about more and more as I get older, and start seeing the flaws in the justice system. And I’ll come back to this when I get to Ty. Besides all that baggage, Landon was super sweet and I loved seeing him with the animals. While occasionally the animal stories felt a bit outside of the plot, as an animal lover I adored them. The antics of the horses, dogs and cats just made my heart happy. I loved seeing Landon find some peace, and eventually find love for the first time in his life. I will admit I wish that he’d also found more of his own worth by the epilogue, but I also see how long a process that would be in real life.
Ty was…well, he was a bit of an idiot when it came to matters of the heart, and I could see where he was getting things wrong from the start. But I guess that makes sense, because he’d formed a certain opinion in his childhood, and didn’t reevaluate. I loved how passionate he was about his farm, his animals, his job. I appreciated that that dedication and passion transferred to Landon, despite Ty’s own reluctance. My issue came in the waffling. I totally expected the waffling, and honestly it would have been a totally unrealistic story if it hadn’t been there. But it just kept happening over and over, and since I came for a love story and could see into Landon’s heart, it just became frustrating because I’d already got the point the author was trying to make, and it wasn’t adding more to the development in my opinion. As a result, there were sections of this book that just felt repetitive, and that contributed to the slow pacing for me.
I definitely enjoyed them together, though apparently I could have used more plot and fewer steamy scenes since I started skimming them. There’s a balance for this reader, and the author didn’t achieve it for *me*.
It was interesting seeing Landon’s interactions with Luke from his perspective, and I felt like I got all the answers to the questions that I had in that book. I also appreciated meeting Jon and Brent, since I hadn’t read their book. I have a feeling if I had, it would have been great fan service. Ty’s brother Caden was a bit harder to like, though he wasn’t completely unlikable…and his wife was definitely much better! 🙂
The secondary stars were definitely the animals, and there are just too many to name (though special shout out to Houdini and Blaine).
I will admit I wasn’t surprised by the conflict, though again…the pacing left me skipping ahead because apparently I have no patience right now.
So yeah. For me, the book would have been a solid 4 star if it was like 50-100 pages shorter.
Too many sex scenes? There must have been a ton. I’m sorry it made you skim.