The story of Maggie and Cash. A little bit of age difference, a little bit of grief, and a whole lotta horses.

Maggie is a ranch owner and widow (heterosexual sort). Cash is hired as a ranch and for the Summer (her father, Buck, and Maggie know each other). Cash, I guess, is sorta taking a break from the city and girlfriends (although I didn't really get that feeling while reading the novel, that was more of a blurb on the back of the book sorta revelation).

I guess that they fall for each other as they work the ranch and do the collecting of hay and such. There's some back and forth because all Maggie has ever known is heterosexualness, and Cash is a young sorta player. So neither one is totally all in. But, of course, they find themselves falling closer.

My main problem with the novel was that I just didn't believe it. Maybe it's just me, but I felt like there was too much tell and not enough show. I couldn't feel the chemistry between the two women. They had some verbal sparring, and they both seemed written twenty years younger than they were (I would have guessed Cash was eight not twenty-eight, and Maggie maybe twenty not forty-three, and it was like that through the whole book, Maggie 'bouncing' from her truck? No, just no).

I liked the plot, but, the characters all fell mostly flat for me and that made the novel less enjoyable. ( )

Maggie Tanner, a widowed rancher, needs help with the haying. Her college friend, Buck, needs a favor - take one of his wayward sons off of his hands for the summer. It sounds like a win-win proposition until Cash Tate steps foot on Maggie's property. Cash is a woman, has absolutely no experience in ranching, and stirs things in Maggie that she never thought she was capable of experiencing. As the summer progresses, Cash and Maggie draw closer to one another, although Maggie is reluctant to open her heart to taking a chance.

This story is told in first person (Maggie's point of view), so it really does offer an interesting take on her thoughts and feelings. If it was told in the third person, I think that Maggie would have come off as a rather cold, back-and-forth sort of character. But as the reader is able to see her thoughts and, if not understand them all, at least empathize with most of them, Maggie comes off as a much deeper character. At times I wanted to wallop her on the side of her head because she was so stubborn, though!

I really liked the character of Cash, who was brash and knew, for the most part, exactly what she wanted from the get go. She just had to show Maggie that they wanted the same thing, which took a long time. The book is definitely a slow burn, but I enjoy those so much more than the "love at first glance and we are just meant to be together and we know it by page twenty" romances.

The world building is really good and gives you a real taste for the Kansas prairie life. Altogether a great read; I enjoyed it quite a bit. ( )