Book Review: Off to the Races

I read and loved Elsie Silver’s Chestnut Springs series and when deciding whether I wanted to start her new Rose Hill series or read her completed Gold Rush Ranch series, I decided to go with Gold Rush Ranch. Partly because it’s complete and partly because one of the books is about Violet Eaton – the sister to the Eaton’s from Chestnut Springs – and I really wanted to read her story. The first book in the Gold Rush Ranch series is Off to the Races and I loved it!

The novel follows Billie Black and Vaugn Harding. Vaugn’s family owns a horse racing farm and he’s recently left the city and moved to the farm to help him mourn his beloved grandfather’s death and also in a desperate bid to find something to clear his grandfather’s name from a scandal that broke out saying his grandfather was fixing races.

Billie is a rising star in the horse training world. She recently found a lot of success in Europe and is back home in Canada to make a name for herself there. Despite getting off to a rocky start at her interview, Vaughn hires Billie to train his horses particularly his race horse that has been giving them a lot of trouble, Double Diablo. Billie is also trying to escape her past, which she’s kept hidden from the public for years. Will Vaughn and Billie learn to work together and not get under each other’s skin? Will they give in to their attraction to one another – especially after spending so much time together?

I loved this book and loved Billie and Vaughn. I enjoyed watching their relationship change from just tolerating one another to becoming friends and then more. Billie’s love for DD was so powerful that I could feel it through the pages and it made me root for DD the whole time. The only thing I wish the book included was some more of Billie’s background because her past was so interesting but we didn’t get to learn that much about it and I don’t imagine getting to dive deeper into it in future books in the series since the other books focus on other couples.

Overall, I loved this book and couldn’t put it down.

Read this if you want a spicy cowboy romance with the workplace romance trope and a little bit of enemies to lovers.

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