The Gunslinger’s Guide to Avoiding Matrimony (Gunslinger, 2) Mass Market Paperback – July 26, 2022

I absolutely love, love, love this series! The Gunslinger series is guaranteed to make you smile! The Gunslinger’s Guide To Avoiding Matrimony is the second book in the Gunslinger series. This is Adam and Nora’s story.Adam is a gunslinger wanting to retire. Adam finds the town of Desolation, a town he thought was fictional, known for giving men of criminal natures a new start. Nora is an independent, lonely woman facing losing everything she has if she can’t find a way to stop her father from gambling away her future. Adam and Nora are thrown together through hilarious circumstances. Adam must find a way to meet the town’s expectations and irritating laws while avoiding Nora if he wants to stay.Adam is the unluckiest, accident-prone man! He tries fiercely to avoid Nora, but his lousy luck throws him into Nora’s path every time. Nora has always felt ignored, unwanted, and unattractive. Even her father berates her every chance he gets. I loved Nora’s spunk! Nora stands toe to toe with this notorious gunslinger, and Adam is hopelessly lost to Nora’s charms.This book is a romcom and western expertly intertwined. If you don’t read westerns, I implore you to try this series. I instantly fell in love with this wily bunch of townspeople. The plot is flawlessly comical and endearingly romantic. The book is fast-paced, and I didn’t want it to end! I love that the characters from the first book showed up again. However, Adam and Nora’s story stands on its own. I have eagerly awaited this second installment, and I was ecstatic that it exceeded my expectations. Michelle McLean always delivers a well-put-together, hilarious, passionate story that leaves the reader wanting more. Michelle McLean, please write more Gunslinger books! I can’t wait to see what newcomer will haplessly wander into Desolation next! I voluntarily read and reviewed an advance copy of this book through Netgalley and the publisher. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I loved the last book in this series so much, I knew that I needed to read this one as well. Not surprisingly the author delivered! Adam Brady is funny without trying to be. Just living his life appears to be an exercise in futility. He admits he makes bad decisions that often have costly consequences. When he arrives by accident to the hidden and obscure town of Desolation, he mistakenly gets married to Nora Schumacher, a 25yo spinster who is “scraping 6 feet tall” and “built sturdier than most.” Problem is he wants NOT to be married at all, he has legitimate reasons which he won’t share, while Nora wants desperately to BE married and likewise is not in a sharing mood. What the townsfolk do to help out Nora is hilarious until Adam figures out things on his own.Whew! Once they accept their attraction to one another, the steam lifts right off the pages. If you like cowboy books with heat and humor you will want to read this series. So good. I volunteered to review an ARC of this book through Entangled/NetGalley.

First I want to thank you for letting me read this book early. I have never read a book about a western romance that I have actually really really enjoyed!! I was so invested in this story, it was soooo good, that when It does go into stores Im going to buy this book to keep in my collection. This is about a gunslinger named Adam Brady who basically doesn't really have a place to live so he finds this town thats like kinda hidden called desolation, he ends up like going into a big town wedding not knowing that there is a wedding going on and this woman named Nora Schumacher tells him to sign a paper and they unfortunately become married and one of his rules is he avoids marriage at all costs. This reminded me of marriage of convenience a slow burn enemies to lovers trope. Where they would fight back and forth while being married and she told him if you want to stay here you have to be married and have a job to be part of this town. He wanted nothing to do with her and being married, absolutely nothing! And she was telling her friends and her whole plan but not him that the reason she wants to be married is to get the deed to be under her name eventually for her house because her dad was a drunk and kept wasting all their money on poker games and alcohol, and she wanted the deed under her name if she got married and then somehow got this guy to leave her so it would be under her name and her father cant take it from her and waste their money, especially since her mother was buried in the backyard. So as the story unfolds you can see the gunslinger Adam slowly falling for her and her as well but kind of playing it cool like they dont but you can see it and when they slowly fall in love he tells her the reasons why he doesn't believe in being married and he is also hiding from the bad men he doesn't want the town to be caught up in his problems. Seeing Nora he thinks of her as a very strong independant woman who can handle businesses on her own while holding up her drunken dad who is very mean to her. He ends up getting fired at every job in desolation, but Nora was so irresistible to him and even when they agreed to be together she told him her deepest darkest secrets and opened up to him finally and he saw how strong she really was around her father who was downright rude to her most of the time. I really liked their chemistry together Nora and Adam. I also loved the end it was super sweet even if one of the outlaws came to town looking for him and but even when her father had realizes towards the end how he had been he finally told his daughter how Adam really did love her even if she didn't believe it but slowly came to believe it after saving her and then she had to go and save him. I couldn't put this book down it was very very good.

It had its funny moments but at a point it was just like,ok , get on with the story already.

It starts off silly and then settles down to tongue-in-cheek amusing. While McLean doesn't appear old enough to remember them, it reminds me of the 60s comedies like Support Your Local Sherriff. I can envision Paula Prentiss as Anna and Jim Hutton (or maybe James Garner) as Adam. So, it's old-time farce and good fun. Stories for Doc and Preacher seem to be in the wings. I hope so.