Fever Dream by Elsie Silver: a review by Kayne
Fever Dream is the first book in the Emerald Lake series and has a forbidden romance between Emmett, one of the top professional bull riders in the world and Julia, his main competitor’s sister. I loved the small town feel and gorgeous Canadian Rockies setting along with the fun drama of the Romance Ranch bachelor show.
Emmett has been a professional bull rider for years and is one of the best in the world but hasn’t been able to win the championship yet. His family needs money to keep their horse breeding farm from going bankrupt. It’s expensive to keep up with the bills and feed the horses. Then along comes the Romance Ranch reality dating show looking for a bachelor to be their star. They want a well-known professional bull rider with a face for TV and think Emmett would be perfect. The problem is, he would have to pretend he’s ready to settle down and go on dates with the women on the show, which is really funny because he has always been the guy that doesn’t do relationships. When they offer Emmett $500,000 to be their bachelor, he reluctantly agrees so he can save their family’s horse ranch.
Julia has been hired as a location consultant for the Romance Ranch show and is surprised to see Emmett is the bachelor! She grew up in Emerald Lake and knows Emmett because her brother Theo (from Reckless) is one of Emmett’s main bull riding competitors. She also remembers a time a few years ago when Emmett secretly helped her out when she ran into trouble on a cruise. Julia has just finished her master’s in film studies and is excited to get a chance to work on her first real show. There will be ten beautiful women competing for Emmett, with twenty-four-hour footage for six weeks. The producer wants to set the show up for lots of drama, and he gets it!
Some of the tasks Julia’s been assigned are difficult to do and Emmett starts to check in on her to see if she needs help. They assemble a swinging bench (Julia calls it a love seat) so they have a place where they can film him getting to know the dates. I loved the scene when Julia is scouting for locations for them to film and it gets prickly when he shows her his favorite spot with cactus. Their banter had me laughing!
As they begin to trust each other their attraction builds. They both have complicated pasts and share with each other the things they are working through. He’s supposed to choose a bachelorette from the show but the more Julia and Emmett are around each other, the more they want each other.
I especially enjoyed the beautiful setting in the Canadian Rockies and Emmett’s family. His siblings like to tease Emmett and their Sunday morning breakfasts, when they all gather together, are a lot of fun. I look forward to seeing their stories. Wild Side was one of my top ten favorite books of 2025 but Fever Dream has now taken over as my new favorite Elsie Silver book! It’s a treasure!