I wish I could give half star ratings on Goodreads. This one was a very high 4 star for me. Now that I know there are 9 books in this series...it looks like I have a lot of catching up to do.

First of all, thank you to the author for writing about main characters who are in their 30's. It was so nice to read about characters who have already seen a bit of life, but still need to figure some things out.

I thought the built up to the relationship between Landry and Fia was fantastic. They have such history in their relationship and I thought that the balance between their relationship and them both building a relationship with their daughter was excellently executed.

Landry is also a Taylor Swift fan...and if you give me a cowboy who loves tswift I am instantly going to swoon.

I received an ARC for Harlequin Trade Publishing in exchange for an honest review.

Thanks to Canary Street Press and HTP for an advanced copy of Hero for the Holidays by Maisey Yates.

I didn't realize this was book #9 in the Four Corners Ranch series and while I read it as a standalone, I really think I would have enjoyed this more if I had read other books in this series.

ARC provided by Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Rating 4.0

Wow this one is NOT a lite read. LOTS of emotions and heart.

This couple's story is one I have been waiting for. You felt the angst, chemistry and animosity come through in past series.

The mystery of what the heck happened between theses two is solved but boy it was a roller coaster of a ride. Landry and Fia's love story isn't for the light hearted, that's for sure.

They have a past and it finally comes back full circle.

It's them now confronting it and working through it. Making some honest observations and confessions. Communicating them with each other and learning forgiveness and compromise.

[I have to say that a lot of focus is put on adoption and their child in the first half of the book. And I have a lot of conflicting thoughts on that. Personal so won't dive too deep into it. But I just want to emphasize that a lot of time is spent on the struggle emotionally and mentally on what transpired. I thought it was well balanced.

It was emotionally packed but had me engaged. But I will be honest I did think it leaned a little too much in ruminating on the adoption. (hide spoiler)]

But in the end happy to see they all got their HEA.

Landry and Fia have loved each other since their teens, but they haven’t spoken in 13 years. It’s a lovers to enemies to lovers troupe that speaks of deep heartache and deep love. Toss in a rather unique family situation and you have a rather compelling read. Thanks to NetGalley for the read!

Fia and Landry do not get along-they hate each other with passion you could say. Teenage lovers, accidental pregnancy, all the angst. After her adoptive parents pass away, Lila finds herself in the care of her biological father, Landry, in his home town.

I didn't really connect with these characters- I ultimately DNF this story. Interesting concept, the cover definitely drew me in.

This was my first Maisey Yates book - and it won't be my last. This was a very interesting story that surprised me in how emotional it was. Landry and Fia have a tortured past before meeting each other and then after that has had a profound impact on their relationship(s) for years. When Landry brings his teenage daughter Lila home that no one knew about it sets things in motion to work through a lot of hurt. While the title occurs during the holidays and gives nod to tree buying, trimming etc - it truly is more about working through the past and learning about themselves and each other. It was thought provoking and adorable at the same time. Who doesn't love a dad who will move heaven and earth to try in an effort to make a teenager comfortable. They both do a lot of soul searching (OK perhaps a tad too much but it is likely more realistic as what they went through before is not something that can be resolved quickly after years of hurt. You are rooting for them to resolve differences and it all plays out with Lila in the forefront. I was surprised I got emotional myself at one point. It's a good read - not what I would call a light fluffy holiday romance - more true to life with a satisfying end. Ms Yates does her story telling well.

Thank you Harlequin Trade Publishing and NetGalley for the E-Arc of Hero for the Holidays.

Plot: Fia Sullivan and Landry King have extensive history. Landry ends up showing up at Four Corners Ranch with his biological daughter who recently lost her adoptive parents. Landry wants the opportunity to prove that he can be the father that he always wanted to be; however, Fia steps in and has other plans. Fia struggles being around Landry and he struggles being around her after the dramatic past that they share. They are forced to put aside their differences and become adults. In doing so, sparks reignite.

It is astonishing how Maisey keeps pumping out great books as quickly as she does. Somehow, she is able to fit in a large quantity of story into a quick read. This book pulled on the heartstrings As a parent, I felt lots of emotions with this one with the storyline of Lila, Landry, and Fia and losing Sunday. I was a little disappointed in the lack of Christmas in the holiday themed book. I also felt like the ending was a bit rushed and could have been drug out a little more.

Landry is your typical country cowboy. He is head strong, passionate, and wants the opportunity to prove that he can be the father he’s always wanted to be. I kind of wish that he had a little bit of a mouth on him. However, even though he didn’t, he was still yummy to read about.

Fia is a fiery red head who is strong, resilient, determined, and willing to work with Landry to make their situation agreeable for both of them.

If you like these:
🐴 Second chance romance
🐴 Small town romance
🐴 Accidental pregnancy
🐴 Family drama
Then you will love this book. Well done!

Review posted to Goodreads on 10/22/24
Review posted to IG on 10/22/24
Review posted to Amazon on 10/23/24
Review posted to Barnes & Noble on 10/24/24

I enjoyed this book, but felt it was a bit slow in the beginning. Once the background information of Landry and Fia was explained the story caught my attention. I loved how Lila's story told a story about adoption and what ifs (don't want to spoil all the story). Overall, a very good story.

Thank you to Maisey Yates, Harlequin Trade Publishing & NetGalley for the ARC. My review is voluntary and all opinions expressed are my own.

Landry King has a difficult time dealing with his past relationship with Fia Sullivan. They were teenage lovers who broke up after Fia became pregnant and gave their baby away.
Unexpectantly, Landry brought their young daughter, Lia, home 13 years later.

What a shock for Fia, their families and the community in which they live! Fia and Landry have a lot to explain. They both have to relive the past to understand the future.

The book's storyline was different than anything I have ever read. It was a little racy for my liking.

Hero for the Holidays is part of Maisey Yates Four Corners Ranch series. This is the story of Landry King, youngest of the King brothers, and Fia Sullivan, eldest of the Sullivan sisters. As the story begins, Landry has traveled to Portland to meet the new love of his life, his daughter Lila, and it is love at first sight for Landry. A teenage affair brought about her birth to two troubled kids. Her teenage mother did what she thought was best for her child’s future and relinquished her baby to a loving couple who desperately wanted a child. And Lila did have a good life until a tragic accident robbed her of the only parents she had ever known. It took almost a year for the authorities to get to her adoption records where Landry had placed his contact information just in case his daughter ever wanted to find him.

Now, Landry and his daughter make their way back to Four Corners Ranch where the actual tale begins when Landry springs Lila on his family at dinner. As they settle in to daily life it becomes imperative for Landry to speak to Lila’s birth mother and that they develop a plan. And this plan is the backbone of a lovely story of reconciliation, reunion, and new beginnings. I very much enjoyed this book as I have the series and I do recommend it!

4.5 stars

Whew! This book is heavy. But it’s also hopeful, joyful, and gives a fantastic HEA.

If you’ve been reading this series, you may have been anticipating this book as much as I was. I feel like I’ve been waiting forever to discover the root of the animosity between this couple. As everyone at Four Corners Ranch had their theories about why Landry and Fia could hardly be in the same room together, so did I. Their back story is even more tragic than I had assumed.

There are a lot of things that happen in this book for “romance reasons” and you just have to go with it. From the way Landry ends up in the life of his daughter who was given up for adoption 13 years ago to the way Fia learns of Lila living at King’s Crest with him, on and on. All that being said, this book also does a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to women and girls, their rights, how the world looks at them as opposed to how men and boys are viewed, choices, options, etc., etc. This bit of wisdom from Fia after Landry tells her he feels like an emotional preschooler next to her is a case in point:

“Because the world only demands men ascend to the emotional level of the preschooler, Landry. That’s the problem. So if it seems outrageous to you, it’s only because I don’t thing you realize how much is asked of women.”

BOOM! Mic drop.

Yes, in real life this story wouldn’t be so neat and tidy. That’s not to say there weren’t raw emotions on the page, but through it all I knew there would be a happy ending. I’m still going to say this story is so important in this day and age. It brought me the things I love in my Romance books (love, chemistry, butterflies, happiness) while also discussing important issues without cramming those issues onto the page without thought. It all flows smoothly and plays out organically.

I’m so glad there are more books in this series so I can watch this little family grow in the background of the other stories.

This is a Second Chance Cowboy Christmas Romance, and this is the 9th book in the Four Corners Ranch series. I ended up DNFing this book because the characters drove me crazy. I just did not connect to the characters, and I felt some of the characters did not act their age. I received an ARC of this book. This review is my own honest opinion about the book like all my reviews are.

Title: Hero for the Holidays
By: Maisey Yates
Pub. Date: October 22, 2024

Genre:
Fiction, Women’s, Romance, Westerns

Trigger Warnings:
Family drama, adoption, foster care, trauma, lies, secrets, loss
*I knocked off a star for adult content. Some are just mentions, others are spicier, however, the overall story was too suspenseful to just stop. (Chapters 7, 14, 17, 20, 23)*

Favorite Quotes:
“We were…nothing but broken.”

“It was love. The kind of love that had made a hard decision.”

“Sometimes loving somebody with everything means being willing to let them go.”

Summary/Review:
Laundry King harbors a deep yearning for the child he gave up for adoption—a decision made against his will. He ensures that the adoption agency has his contact information, hoping that when she turns eighteen, she will reach out to him.

Fia Sullivan made the heart-wrenching choice to place her baby for adoption many years ago, a decision she has never been able to forget. At just fifteen, she was too young to care for her daughter, so she found a loving couple to adopt her, trusting that her child would be in good hands.

Now thirteen, Lila has lost everything she once knew and is being shuffled through the foster care system. When her case manager reveals that her biological father wants to connect with her, Lila embarks on an emotional journey in "Hero for the Holidays."

Part of the Four Corners Ranch series, this is my first novel by Maisy Yates, and it stands alone beautifully. The characters are deeply relatable, and the minor characters add rich layers to the family drama. This is a fast paced, tear jerker.

Similar authors to:
Tessa Bailey
Emma Lord
Ali Brady

Thank you Maisey Yates, Harlequin Trade Publishing, and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader Copy for free. I am leaving this review voluntarily.

#HerofortheHolidays
#MaiseyYates
#HarlequinTradePublishing
#reluctantreaderreads
#advancedreadercopies
#NetGalley

It was so nice to come back to Four Corners Ranch and catch up on all the families and their lives. This is Fia and Landry’s story, and it is full of past decisions and regrets, but also with future memories and love. I was so glad to get to read an advance copy of this book from NetGalley and I do recommend it as a really feel good story for the holidays.

Maisey Yates is an author I turn to for complex family dynamics and deeply emotional romance with a western flair. I like some of her books more than others but she’s an author who has never let me down. Her newest novel, a second-chance, lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers story with deep emotional underpinnings just may be my all-time Yates favorite.

Everyone on the Four Corners Ranch knows Fia Sullivan and Landry King can’t stand each other but nobody knows why. Those of us who have been reading this series don’t know why. Hero for the Holidays opens with that reason and, boy howdy, it’s a doozy. What follows is a roller coaster of emotions as Fia, Landry, and Lila navigate the life-changing events that have been thrust upon all three of them.

What I enjoyed most about this book is the evolution of these characters, both individually as well as a family unit. I like how Yates leaves no stone unturned in the development and evolution of Fia and Landry as she guides them through a present-day reflection of the turmoil of their teens, something they had never talked about, helping them forge a new understanding of decisions made at that time through the more mature lens of the people they are today. It’s a gradual process, with ups and downs, as is to be expected when you’ve spent years believing you’re 100% in the right about something only to realize maybe you shoulder some of the blame. Their individual growth paves the way for forgiveness, understanding, and a chance to rekindle an old love in a more balanced, mature, and enduring, though no less fiery, way. These two have chemistry!

Lila offers another layer of emotion, complication, sarcastic humor, and hope as only a young teen whose life has imploded can. She’s authentic, relatable, and has a firm grip on my heart, as she does with Landry, Fia, and the entire King and Sullivan families. She’s the heartbreaking - but ultimately healing - catalyst for the changes that are long overdue in Landry’s and Fia’s lives. I laughed with her, ached for her, loved her. She’s one of my favorite characters of this entire series.

Hero for the Holidays is the ninth book in the Four Corners Ranch series. While several characters and couples from earlier books are featured in this book, Yates has written the story in such a way that it can be enjoyed as a standalone. I’ve read all of the books and it’s fun to catch up with other characters but I don’t think starting with Hero for the Holidays would lessen the emotional impact of Fia’s and Landry’s story. It might, however, make you curious enough to pick up the other eight books.

Hero for the Holidays was such a good book to spend time reading it. This is the first book from the Four Corners Ranch Series I have read. I am going to start with the first and read them all. The characters were go fun to be with.
The main characters got a chance to find each other again. The chemistry between them jumped off the pages and I was anxious for them to figure out what they wanted in their lives.
Maisey Yates is a new author for me, and I am glad I did
Thank you NetGalley, Maisey Yates and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the copy pf Hero for the Holidays. This is my personal review.
Hero for the Holidays was such a good book to spend time reading it. This is the first book from the Four Corners Ranch Series I have read. I am going to start with the first and read them all. The characters were go fun to be with.
The main characters got a chance to find each other again. The chemistry between them jumped off the pages and I was anxious for them to figure out what they wanted in their lives.
Maisey Yates is a new author for me, and I am glad I found her.
Thank you NetGalley, Maisey Yates and Harlequin Trade Publishing for the copy pf Hero for the Holidays. This is my personal review.

With Maisey Yates, you either buy the romance ethos or you don’t; it doesn’t change, which isn’t a criticism, because commonalities are found in every writer’s work. Maybe ethos-exhaustion occurs when a writer is as prolific as Yates? And yet, I enjoy every Yates romance I read, Hero for the Holidays no less than any other. If you enjoy angst, only-one-partner-in-life ethos, internalizing of character repentance and transformation, then Yates will be the author for you; though if you don’t read all her work, who can blame you? Hero for the Holidays, despite its cheery, ranch-y clutch cover is one seriously sad romance, though still ROMANCE; it all works out in the end and, in this case, at least for this reader, in a narratively convincing way. That’s what the genre does, move us to the HEA and we should, in the hands of a good writer, believe it. Before I get into Hero further, the deets from the publisher blurb:

When Landry King shows up at Four Corners Ranch with Lila, the teenage daughter no one ever knew he had, it sets the gossip mill churning. Landry’s daughter has lost her adoptive parents and is in desperate need of a new family. So this Christmas, the untamed cowboy is finally getting the chance to become the father he could never have been when Lila was born. Even if it means dealing with his other biggest regret…

Fia Sullivan hates Landry King. That’s how it’s always been. At least, that’s how it’s been since their dramatic teenage love affair ended in a way that shattered their hearts and left them with wounds that never healed. When Landry dredges up her most agonizing secret, Fia’s devastated…and also overjoyed at the possibility of the new life they could have. But there’s only so long she can be near Landry before their simmering desire reignites. Can they finally overcome their past pain to find new love—and new family—this Christmas?

Yates’s premise is awkward: though they share a business and live ON THE SAME LAND, Landry and Fia never speak to each other, or at least only in the four ranches that work as a business collaboration joint meetings. Yates has to set up Landry and Fia (awful names, BTW) to having stayed apart for thirteen contactless years. Yes, their past is painful: teen lovers from dysfunctional families who found comfort, excitement, and love in each other also found sex…hormones plus amygdala gone wild resulted in an unwanted pregnancy. Landry, who craved family even then, wanted to marry and have their family; Fia, wise, though younger and the one carrying the burden, knew they could not sustain what was an adolescent pipe dream gave their secret baby up for adoption. Now, Lila, their thirteen-year-old daughter, is Landry’s, who gave the adoption agency his name to be reached should his daughter ever wish to. In an act of hurt petty vengeance, he doesn’t tell Fia and when Fia sees her, she realizes who she is because Lila looks exactly like her.

Melodrama, high angst-o-metre and this romance could have gone to hell in a hand-basket of recrimination and sentimentality, but Yates pulls it off because she’s a deft hand at showing character turns: a character thinks and thinks and puts themselves in the other person’s shoes, they weigh and measure and are honest about their own guilty part and they regret and amend. That is the pattern and it works. Because what other genre can say that it is about transformation and promise than romance, derided as it often is?

Moreover, the premise does work well in one particular way: to get Landry and Fia (names are still awful) to talk to each other: to express their hurt, forgive, and enact Yates’s favourite convention. Yates’s couples are meant to be together and, despite the often, but not in this case, explicit intimate scenes, their bodies too are only meant for the other. It’s not quite fated mates, but I do like to think of it like Plato’s idea of a person’s “other half”, so the HEA is a completion of what is “meant to be” for two people.

For Yates, it can only come about with changes of the heart. Fia and Landry have had a time of it, but in their own way stayed true to what they had and to each other (you’ll have to read it to understand). Without spoiling, Yates’s characters are stalled and love, in the form of a child, in the form of a “convenience of civility” for parenting’s sake, in conversation, understanding, and consideration (because you can’t have a romance without good people; they can be flawed, but at core, good), something is set free, something new is born, and what could be more important to a Christmas romance than that?

As with most Yates’s romances, it drags for a bit too long and there’s a mother-daughter (for Fia and her mother) reconciliation that I thought was piling too much icing on the cake, but it doesn’t go beyond a page, one too many at that, but forgivable. Yates’s Hero for the Holidays offers “a mind lively and at ease,” Emma.

Maisey Yates’s Hero for the Holidays is published by Harlequin Books and released yesterday, October 22nd. I received an e-galley from Harlequin Books via Netgalley. The above is an expression of my honest, AI-free opinion.

In the middle of an investigation, the 2 main characters are thrown together to try to lure out the criminal. In the midst of it all they find that their walls have been broken down and discover that maybe HVE is for everyone.

There are lots of emotions in this story stemming from the main characters giving up their baby for adoption as teens (the FMC did it without the MMC's consent). When their daughters adoptive parents die, Landry steps up. He has held so many negative feelings for Fia because of that big decision she made without him, so this dredges up soooo many feelings for him when he has to be involved with Fia and the daughter she gave up. I felt lots of emotions throughout while they worked together to navigate co-parenting a child who loved her adoptive parents and really doesn't care to get to know them (she's really dealing with a lot of grief). The topics were heavy but this was a really good and emotional second chance story. I would recommend it to anyone who loves emotional reads, angst, second chances and family drama-mixed with some cowboy/ranch life.

The past comes back to haunt a couple that loved each other too much as teenagers. The mother allowed adoption of their daughter immediately after the birth. Our hero steps up when their daughter tragically loses her adoptive parents. This is #9 of the Four Corners Ranch series. The characters from the first eight were a distraction to me. I would suggest that readers start at the beginning of the series.