Reviewed by Anna Lynn
TITLE: The Cowboy and the Hacker
SERIES: Farthingdale Valley #5
AUTHOR: Jackie North
PUBLISHER: Blue Rain Press
LENGTH: 294 pages
RELEASE DATE: November 24, 2024
BLURB:
Will you go with me? Yes, to the ends of the earth and back again.
Cal
Cal made a coding mistake that got him arrested and far away from Preston, his horrible boyfriend.
After over a year in jail, he’s touch-starved and afraid. Not of doing his parole in the wilds of Wyoming, but that Preston will come and force him back to Denver.
In the valley, when Cal is assigned to Zeke Malloy’s team, his luck starts to change because Zeke is patient and kind, both with the horses and with Cal.
Cal doesn’t trust anyone now, except Cal’s crush on Zeke starts with a single word of kindness. A warm touch. And the smile in those green eyes.
Zeke
After a horse fell on him, Zeke’s bronc riding days are over. His girlfriend wants a buckle-wearing man, not a broken one, and leaves him.
Zeke finds he doesn’t care that he’s alone now. But he can’t stop thinking about the time Galen Parnell asked him out, as if there was something Galen saw in Zeke.
Was he gay?
When Zeke starts to work with Cal Tamalin, the only parolee on his team, he begins to think maybe Galen had been on to something.
Getting close to Cal can only spell disaster, and surely Zeke’s had enough of those, right?
He shouldn’t take the risk, but doesn’t think his heart can resist the biggest blue eyes Zeke has ever seen.
The Cowboy and the Hacker is a story of forbidden love with hurt/comfort, bi-awakening, mutual rescue, only one tent, moccasins, a bear, maybe two bears, two men and three ponies on a long, lonesome ride, and of course an HEA. It is book 5 in the Farthingdale Valley series but can be read as a standalone.
REVIEW:
Ms. Jackie North is an amazing writer, I love her historical love stories of men finding and loving each other across time and somehow making everything possible for them to be together forever.
Into another series, Farthingdale Valley, and this is book five, The Cowboy and the Hacker. Cal is release from prison where he served a year for an embezzlement charge which he faked just to get out of an abusive relationship with his boyfriend. When he was sent to Farthingdale Valley, he saw it as a chance to finally be able to escape his boyfriend once and for all. He just didn’t count on Zeke, the kind cowboy who will be his mentor and partner in taking care of the abused horses as well.
Zeke was a bemedalled Bronco Rider, having won several times, but when an accident happened that stops him riding again, (which he was secretly thankful because he was growing tired of it) his girlfriend left him. Now working as the lead in in a team of reforming ex-convicts, his life has purpose again. When Cal Tamalin was assigned to his team, an attraction towards the young man started deep within. But he is a bit unsure of what he is feeling having only gotten out of a previous relationship and after the accident. But I think he welcomes it, these new feelings, it means he is still very much alive and living life. And Cal is the first man he is ever attractive to.
What happens when Cal’s abusive ex finds out what Cal is up to and comes for him once and for all and take him back, will Cal be able to get rid of him ever again? What if Zeke finds out about Cal’s abusive ex, will Zeke still like him and accept him.
Somehow Ms. Jackie North made it all work out in the end and that amazes me so much. This books are so well-written, research was done and the details are so amazing, one thing that I really love about how Ms. North writes. Congratulations and thank you very much for sharing this world with us Ms. Jackie North!
RATING: 
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