BOOK REVIEW: The Good Time Girls by K.T. Blakemore

I received this book for free from Netgalley. That did not influence this review.

The Good Time Girls by K.T. Blakemore is the first book in her new Wild-Willed Women of the West series.

Ruby Calhoun didn’t want to be an outlaw. She wanted to be Annie Oakley. But one bad marriage, two children left in the care of her sister, a stint as a performer (but not a prostitute) in a Wild West brothel /theater, and a failed stagecoach robbery have turned her into one. That and a troubled friendship with her partner, Pip Quinn. Pip likewise is haunted by a relationship with the wrong man. A very wrong man.

This rollicking novel told from Ruby’s viewpoint skips back and forth in time from current action, when Ruby and Pip are reunited, to four years earlier, when Ruby and Pip first meet. This format allows the story to unfold in a way that keeps the tension high in both timelines.

Ruby escaped an abusive marriage but ended up in a dead-end town where she managed to avoid prostitution by becoming a performer at the rinky-dink theater attached to the brothel. She attached herself to the star attraction, Pip. Unfortunately, Pip was in thrall to a gambler/charmer/abuser named Cullen Wilder. Not content with his power over Pip, he wanted control of the brothel as well. Leading to a disastrous turn of events.

Four years later, Ruby has paid her debt to society, but perhaps not her debt to Pip. Ruby owns a small cigar shop and hopes to lead a quiet, safe life. But that dream is laid to rest when Pip walks through the door. It seems Cullen has sent Pip his “calling card,” a death threat. Pip expects Ruby will also be getting a card. The two must join forces to find him, and kill him, before he finds them.

This is a voice-y, old-western adventure with plucky female protagonists — women driven to extremes by the limitations of their lives.