Love's Legacy: A Gay MM Romance Novel Big Bend Series Book 1
LGBTQ Romance/Western
Independently Published
June 1, 2021
244
Love's Legacy - Book 1 of the Big Bend Series: Exhausted from a lengthy court battle over his grandparents’ West Texas ranch, Flex is eager to sell the property and put the whole matter behind him. While meeting the realtor, Flex happens upon sexy motel owner Mitch. As sparks fly between the two, Flex decides selling his family’s legacy may not be the right thing to do. However, ownership of the ranch seems to have initiated sinister nightmares for Flex. Stranger still, these dreams somehow involve Mitch. When the nightmares begin coming true, their concerns deepen. Especially when Flex’s latest vision predicts his own demise. As darkness closes in around them, will Mitch and Flex’s love be enough to ensure their survival? Or will their hopes for a future together go up in smoke?
Reviewed by Ulysses Dietz
Member of The Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
A straightforward romance, with a discreet little paranormal streak in it, Blake Allwood’s “Love’s Legacy” is the first of what should be a very satisfying series.
Fletcher Henry, known as Flex, has met up with a childhood friend in the isolated West Texas town of Alamito, to set about selling off the huge family spread he’s finally inherited under his grandfather’s will – after a five-year lawsuit brought by his aunt to break that will.
Flex meets Mitch Armstrong when he and his friend Eric check into Armstrong’s motel and RV park in Alamito. The instant spark of attraction develops quickly into a friendship when Flex finds Mitch stepping up in his defense against a homophobic RV-er. West Texas, Flex is reminded, is a long way from the gay community of cosmopolitan Houston. Mitch, it turns out, has philosophically resigned himself to a life on his own, all for the love of his own grandfather’s legacy of the land and the tourist accommodations that he’s been steadily improving since he took them over.
Thus the main themes of the book are quickly established: a West Texan’s love for the land, and the slow retreat of prejudice in the face of a changing America.
What struck me most as I read this book was the insistent sincerity of the author’s voice, which convinced me both of the beauty of this land—nestled between the mountains and the Rio Grande—and of the power of Mitch and Flex’s happy memories associated with that land. For all that my own father was born and raised on a farm on the Rio Grande in Albuquerque, I am an Easterner by birth and education. I can see Manhattan from my hilltop suburb, and I have no abiding love for open spaces or the romance of the West. In spite of this, Blake Allwood managed to work his way into my heart through Flex and Mitch—and the other gentle, colorful characters with which he seasons his narrative. Allwood shows us why both of these young men are drawn to the region, and of course teases us with the idea that, together, they might just be more than enough to tackle whatever problems they could encounter in Alamito, from venomous sidewinders to disapproving Bible-thumpers.
Although the story ends satisfyingly enough, the finale felt a bit weak and was intentionally unresolved. Clearly, the author wants us to sign on for the second book in the Big Bend series. Lucky for him, he’s created people and places with enough appeal to make us want to do just that.