Reviewed by Carissa

 

TITLE:  Settling the Score

 

SERIES:  CalPac Crew #4

 

AUTHOR:  Christopher Koehler

 

PUBLISHER:  Dreamspinner Press

 

LENGTH:  320 pages

 

BLURB:  

 

Stuart Cochrane and Philip Sundstrom make an unlikely pair. Philip’s brother, Brad, can’t imagine his brother with another man, let alone with the coxswain he razzed throughout his college rowing career. But somehow they settle into a relationship that works as Philip helps Stuart navigate the pressures of deciding between medical school and competing for a spot on the national rowing team. In turn, Stuart helps Philip with his problems at work, where he’s faced with a rebellious board of directors.

 

Yet soon enough, the pressures take their toll. Stuart comes to resent the easy way Philip spends money, while Philip worries about Stuart’s time commitments. He’ll do anything to come to the rescue, including spending his money to grease the rails for Stuart, but Stuart resents the rich so much it drives a wedge between them.

 

Then Stuart finds himself facing the greatest crisis of his life. There’s only one person he can turn to—but Philip has his own demons to battle in the form of his board trying to frame him for their own unethical actions. Will Philip be able to aid Stuart while he extricates himself from his board’s trap, or will his divided attention cost them both everything that matters?

 

REVIEW:  

 

“Yep, the rowing mafia comes through again.”

 

I have been a fan of this series since the beginning and I was more than pleased with this latest addition to the CalPac catalog.  And not just because we finally get to see Stuart fight his way to his own HEA.  While it took me a few pages to get back into the groove of things, and dredge up a few memories of who exactly was who, and who did what to whom, once it all started to come back, I was locked happily into the story.

 

Philip Sundstrom (brother of Brad, the protag of Tipping the Balance) is one of my favorite characters.  He starts off this book basically tricking his father (who, may I say, is a right bastard) into signing over full and total control of SunHo.  It may have been underhanded.  It may have been tricksy.  But dear gods, was it fun to watch that rat bastard get his comeuppance.  Jail was not enough for that loser.  And everything seems to be going well for Philip…till he finds out his girlfriend has been less than monogamous, that his board is about as dirty as his old man, and that his father may have gotten the last laugh when it came to, as Brad so deridingly called it, the Suburban Graveyard.

 

Meanwhile Stuart Cochrane is coming to the realization that having a rich boyfriend sucks.  Jonathan, despite his lovely English accent, comes with a badgering mother, a lack of self-discipline, and about as much understanding of living ‘poor’ as Stuart knows about being tall.  Which is none whatsoever.  When Jonathan sails to wetter climes for the summer, and they break off what had been a lukewarm relationship at best, Stuart is ready to work, relax, and prepare himself for the exhausting madhouse that will be Med School.

 

Then a chance encounter at a grocery store, leads to first, second, and third looks between Philip and Stuart.  And even if it means driving all the way to Davis to do his grocery shopping, Philip keeps going back, desperate to see the short, ginger-haired man with an ass that makes him salivate and a smile that makes him weak in the knees.  Stuart might not trust Philip’s money, and Philip has no clue how to deal with the chaos of a med-school lover, but neither one can stay away from each other–so they simply don’t bother to try.

 

Like I said, this is probably one of my favorite books out of this series.  I loved Philip.  He is strong and sneaky, but also lonely.  He finds so much happiness when he stumbles upon Stuart, and I can’t help but cheer him on as he tries to pin the coxswain down.  And it is going to take an awful lot of pinning to do it, because Stuart seems to have a pathological dislike of men with money.  Or maybe it is just money in general.  He grew up poor–mostly because his super-conservative/bat-shit crazy parents felt that money was evil and that anything not directly related to the work of God was Satan’s tool–so he has had to struggle to get where he is.  When he sees Jonathan, and later Philip simply throwing money at the problem, he freaks.  And gets seriously pissed.  These two have such a battle playing in the background of almost every interaction, and I loved watching Stuart unbend, and Philip unwind.  They make each other so happy, even if they have to be down-right boneheaded before they walk over a cliff into their HEA.

 

The whole sub plot of Philip’s work was so much fun to read.  I love watching men try to outsmart each other.  And it was entertaining to see just how quickly Philip’s day could go from bad to nuclear.  I did wish that we got more of a kick out of the Philip/Winch battle.  We kept hearing tangentially what Winch was doing to foil Philip’s bid to not end up either kicked out of his own company, or sharing a cell with dear ol’ dad, but I think there should have been one final push-back, near the end to help push the climax that last bit higher.  I do understand, though, that it could have seriously overbalanced the whole issue with Stuart’s family, so maybe it would have been one thing to much for the story to handle at that point.

 

And, just saying, that ending, with Stuart’s sister?  Yeah, that was a kick to the gut.  Just…damn.

 

Would have liked Stuart to be less of a pig-headed ass, for Philip to have one last hurrah at Winch’s egotistical ass, and well, not to have my heart caved in and gutted by Valerie…but I really loved this story.  It seemed to flow so well.  And let’s just say that despite my best intentions I was buried under covers and cats, straight through the night, reading this story because I just couldn’t stop.  It hooked me and never let me go.  I don’t know if there is another book planned for this series, but I sure do hope so.  They are really great, and a good re-read on a cold, wet, windy day.

 

On a side note…reading a book set in a city I live in is just plain odd.  I kept going “I’ve been there!” and “I totally know that place!”  I admit that this may be one of my guilty favorites about this series, the fact that I so get this people cause they are right smack in the middle of my world.  Well, the city limits, anyways.  You wouldn’t catch me out on the river unless there was a tube and a bottle of beer involved.

 

RATING:

 

BUY LINKS: Dreamspinner press Amazon Are