Book Reviews

Book Blurb

Paul Smith prefers his calculator to people. People are annoying and demanding, but numbers will never let you down. He works tirelessly for his dad’s mortgage firm, foreclosing when it makes financial sense, and not losing any sleep over it either. Paul’s dad has always been a demanding taskmaster. But when he has a major health scare, Paul’s dad see’s the error of his ways. He decides he wants to change to a more benevolent business model. After having decades of harsh business practices drilled into him, Paul is not a fan of his dad’s new idea.

Cort Callahan lives and has worked on his granddad’s ranch most of his life. But times are hard and they’ve fallen behind on their mortgage. When Paul’s dad decides he wants to offer them a way out of debt, if they’ll just go along with his unorthodox idea of turning the spread into a dude ranch, it’s hard to tell who thinks it’s a worse idea: Paul or Cort.

But when Cort and his granddad take the deal, Paul is forced to work closely with Cort. The two men are surprised to realize they share an intense attraction that only grows stronger the more they’re around each other.

The problem is Paul has spent his life trusting numbers and calculations. No matter how much he wants Cort, when he looks at how different they are from each other, the two of them just don’t add up.

Book Review

There can be different reasons for people to focus on numbers and facts rather than emotions, and Paul, the “pencil-pusher” in this story, has more than one. Paul’s father used to be a real shark and a demanding boss, but now he has suddenly turned benevolent toward his clients and “demands” Paul do the same. Then Paul meets Cort, his exact opposite, and finds that dealing with his feelings is not just a challenge but almost impossible. Paul is inundated with a way of looking at his professional and his personal life that he can’t deal with – and his journey toward a new self is the focus of this fascinating novel.

Paul starts out as cold, rational, focused on the facts, and not interested in people or their problems at all. It is the way he was raised, and as long as the numbers add up, he can’t go wrong. Except now that his father has changed the way their company works Paul is struggling. He no longer knows what to expect and while he does the best he can, his fundamental insecurity makes him lose his self-confidence and he begins to second-guess his decisions. Not a good place to be in when he is expected to make turning Cort’s grandfather’s ranch into a dude ranch a success.

Cort loves his grandfather’s ranch, has lived there all his life, and knows everyone in town. He is skeptical about Paul’s intentions, doesn’t believe that he is telling the truth, and has a very hard time working with a man who is a city-slicker focused on money and looks rather than people and substance. He makes Paul’s job very difficult, but as they begin to work together, Cort begins to see that there is a human being under the veneer after all.

These men do not get along at all. Much of it is due to assumptions and the fact that they do not speak the same language, but their fundamentally different outlook on life doesn’t help either. Working together inevitably forces them to get to know each other, and, much to their surprise, they discover a certain attraction – limited as it may be by continued “dislike on principle”:

He lifted his wary gaze to mine. “You may not believe me, but I have moments when I actually like you.”
Laughing in spite of myself, I said, “I don’t always hate you either.”

If you like stories where opposites definitely, if very reluctantly, attract, if two men struggling with the way they look at life are your thing, and if you’re looking for an entertaining read that is a combination between a character study and a journey toward fundamental change, then you will probably like this novel.

 

 

 

 

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Additional Information

Format	ebook
Length	Novel, 242 pages
Heat Level
Publication Date	25-October-2016
Price	$3.95 ebook
Buy Link	https://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Pencil-Pusher-S-C-Wynne-ebook/dp/B01M5G39U9