Breaking Down Her Walls // Erin Zak

Leaving is what Julia Finch does best.
When a meeting with her birth parents goes horribly wrong, Julia escapes on a hastily planned road trip and winds up breaking down in a Colorado town so small the cows outnumber the people. Completely out of her element, she takes a temporary job as a ranch hand at Bennett Ranch. She only has to survive long enough to get her car fixed, and then she’s out of there for good. 
Her bad luck continues when she meets the ranch owner, Elena Bennett. Elena is unhappy, abrasive, and annoyingly breathtaking. But the longer Julia stays, the more the ranch starts to feel like home, and her feelings for Elena become impossible to ignore. She’s spent years building her defenses high and running from her past. Could a love worth staying for be the key to breaking down her walls?

I don’t read a lot of romance. I don’t hate the genre, but I’m no good with a landslide of secondhand embarrassment, and I can only read so many heterosexual approaches to a list of similar romantic scenarios. So, there were big points towards me giving Breaking Down Her Walls a go when I realised it was a. a lesbian romance and b. I somehow didn’t register that is was a romance when reading the blurb. And while being a lesbian romance brings with it another list of uncertainties, I honestly loved this novel so much.

While Julia is endlessly running from everything to deal with her past, Elena is rooted to her ranch, trying to find some stability after a number of rocky years. Each woman’s story is slowly dragged out by the other, and the beginning of their intimacy is one overshadowed by the return of Elena’s ex, Penn, at the start of the ranching season(?) The depth of each character is brought out through often endearing events – Julia’s instant and easy communication with the horses, her encouragement of and friendship with Elena’s son, and her slow but steady acceptance into the ranch’s family/friend group.

I loved most things about this book. The actual depth of the characters, the way that being gay wasn’t made a super huge deal of – though I did kind of sigh when the bigotry and coming out came up, since I was kind of hoping it was a ‘this is standard in this novel universe’ but it wasn’t terrible – and the instances of explicit intimacy that were sweet and playful. I know I do have some bias against romance, for a lot of reasons, but this is definitely one to bring me around to the genre.

Breaking Down Her Walls released December 11th 2018.