3 stars. "Homebound" by Meredith Trapp is a decent small-town childhood friends-to-lovers where he falls first, and she's always been it for him. I love how Dakota was a bullrider and Wyatt was a hockey player. Very interesting dynamic with their professions. I loved the relationship between Wyatt and his young baby girl, Vienna, and eventually between Dakota and Vienna, too. If I'm being honest, I just didn't connect to this one like I wanted to in terms of the main relationship between Dakota and Wyatt. Wyatt is a SIMP for Dakota and always has been. On the other hand, she CLEARLY could care less. She has just broken up with her boyfriend, Boone, and though Boone was *!the worst,~* I still felt like she and Boone had more of a connection at times! Yikes! To me, it felt like Wyatt and Dakota's forced proximity was the only reason she wanted to be with him because she didn't feel like doing the fling thing after her heartbreak. She becomes *very* into Wyatt *very* quickly, with no rhyme or reason other than a physical glance at him when he is showering. Before that, she was adamant that she did not like him like that over and over and over again, so I started to feel that deeply, which means I didn't buy how easily she changed her mind! This part of the plot felt very poorly planned out and clunky at best. Once their relationship progresses to the next stage, it literally neeeeeeeeeeeever stops. They just keep doing it and doing it over and over without much story other than that. Maybe one or two bullrides? I really thought I would love this since I have loved many, many other cowboy-types of stories like this (think books written by Elsie Silver, Lyla Sage, etc). Unfortunately, I only just barely liked it. Also, this book is *aggressively* pro-Texas, which made me feel some type of way??? Like, the author brings up multiple times how *~amazing*~ Texas is, and all I thought about was how people's civil rights are constantly being trampled there???