New Review: Lori Austin’s BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER – Clever, Gritty Tale of a Female Bounty Hunter in the Old West and Her Magical Man!

Ok, so you know when you see the title you’re thinking the heroine’s the beauty, right? Wrong!

Set in Kansas and Missouri in 1870, this is the story of Cathleen (“Cat”) Chase, a farm wife who became a bounty hunter, a legend known as Cat O’Banyon, in order to hunt down her husband’s killer. In her words, her occupation was “born from the ashes that had tumbled across Billy’s grave nearly two years ago.”

Cat learned all she knows from Alexi Romanov, a man so pretty he is a beauty with “hands that could make a violin sing or a woman moan.” He was more than her teacher and her healer when she was broken up over Billy’s death; he was her lover. After he’d taught her to shoot and take on any disguise, she left him without a word. Now he’s come to find her.

This is a very clever, well-written tale that captured me from the first page. The banter between Cat and Alexi and Cat’s own thoughts are priceless. And there is more here, lots more. It reflects research into the period, which I so appreciate. It’s a post Civil War story in which the hero is still suffering from the nightmare he experienced.

It’s a story of running away from your past and dealing with the hard stuff. As Alexi said,

“I understand more than most the need to become another. To bury the past along with who you were, to create a new life completely different from it, and forget, or try to, the person who came before.”

I highly recommend this unique story from the Old West. It will keep you reading to solve the mystery and finally see Alexi and Cat come together.

This is the first in Austin’s Once Upon a Time in the West series—and if you get my posts, you’ll get my review of AN OUTLAW IN WONDERLAND in July:

BEAUTY AND THE BOUNTY HUNTER
AN OUTLAW IN WONDERLAND
THE LONE WARRIOR