Love Is a War Song

This is the first NetGalley ARC I have received that made me shout with joy when I got the acceptance email.

It's purely coincidental that I am reviewing Love is a War Song so soon after that absolutely vile/heinous anti-Indigenous tweet was posted by a certain far-right talking head (I started reading it the day before that wretched woman tweeted).

Now, back to the good stuff.

Avery Fox is a former child star-turned-rising pop star whose career is imploding due to taking bad career advice. Her Muskogee heritage is being questioned and online denizens are lobbing threats her way, so her mother/manager's solution is to ship her off to her estranged grandmother's failing horse ranch in Oklahoma and to wait for everything to blow over.

Floundering in unfamiliar surroundings, Avery eventually convinces the ranch hand Logan to teach her what it means to be Muskogee, because Averey's mother never taught her anything at all about her heritage. Avery finds herself falling in love with her new found family, her new community and with Logan.

All too soon Avery is faced with a difficult choice: will she go back to her old life as a vapid pop star now that the storm of bad press has passed or will she fully embrace her new life in Oklahoma?

I usually don't gravitate towards cowboy/small-town romances because I have known far too many problematic cowboys/small-town residents IRL, but I am so glad I read this one. Viewing a small-town through the eyes of an Indigenous author made me remeber all the things I really did love and miss about growing up in a small, close-knit community. And that's as big a part of this story as the romance is: Avery learning about and becoming a part of a community that she had been deprived of her whole life.