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A review by caiti_reads_books
Mackenzie's Mountain by Linda Howard
3.0
After an old fashioned young lady moves to a small town in Wyoming to work as a teacher in the local high school, she gets embroiled with the towns outcast family and tries to help turn things around for them.
So, firstly I need to highlight that this book was released in 1989, so some of the themes are pretty outdated and even offensive in todays enlightened world.
So, we start of with poor Mary Elizabeth, a self-proclaimed spinster and overall dowdy women, something she claims comes from her very old fashioned and repressed aunt. Apart from this she appears to be a very capable woman who is confident in herself and her teaching skills.
The two parties are brought together as she tried to traverse the snowing Wyoming terrain, something she isn’t used to in her hometown. Mary is promptly rescued by our stories hero and sent straight.
The writer spends a phenomenal amount of time focusing on the Native American heritage of Wolf, predominantly as the reason the rest of the town don’t like him (irrespective of his previous brush with the law). However, this is done in such an obscure way, highlighting his supposed ‘primitive’ and ‘animal’ nature, that it just ends up being offensive. Many of his behaviours and skills are put down to his genetics, rather than something he could have learnt; he’s made out to be a great tracker, but more emphasis is put on this as a Native American skill than him having learnt it in the military.
I’m assuming this was all supposed to be an attractive feature with the defenceless young woman is rescued by a handsome savage where he proceeds to ravish her, but apart from its racist nature, it becomes so repetitive.
There is also a lot of unnecessary shaming in this story, and yes I know its 1989 in a rural town and its apparent her aunt was very repressive, but its so over the top that the behaviour becomes unrealistic. Even in 1989 I don’t see how a woman can be ashamed that she’s ‘caught red handed’….teaching a child, even if he is mature for his age. Do the town folk really believe she’d be bumping uglies with him? Doubtful.
So, if you completely ignore all the half-breed shenanigans thrown in every other sentence, this is at its bare bones, a love at first sight romance novel. Wolf is pretty possessive, but this is fairly well reciprocated by Mary and at no point does she shy away from his affections. They do have good chemistry and the horizontal tango scenes are hot.
Overall, it’s a fun story. There’s a decent little side plot about some guy terrorising the town and how they crack the case. I realise its extremely out of date, but if you can skip those bits and appreciate the rest of the writing, its not bad and even enjoyable.
Spoiler
So, firstly I need to highlight that this book was released in 1989, so some of the themes are pretty outdated and even offensive in todays enlightened world.
So, we start of with poor Mary Elizabeth, a self-proclaimed spinster and overall dowdy women, something she claims comes from her very old fashioned and repressed aunt. Apart from this she appears to be a very capable woman who is confident in herself and her teaching skills.
The two parties are brought together as she tried to traverse the snowing Wyoming terrain, something she isn’t used to in her hometown. Mary is promptly rescued by our stories hero and sent straight.
The writer spends a phenomenal amount of time focusing on the Native American heritage of Wolf, predominantly as the reason the rest of the town don’t like him (irrespective of his previous brush with the law). However, this is done in such an obscure way, highlighting his supposed ‘primitive’ and ‘animal’ nature, that it just ends up being offensive. Many of his behaviours and skills are put down to his genetics, rather than something he could have learnt; he’s made out to be a great tracker, but more emphasis is put on this as a Native American skill than him having learnt it in the military.
I’m assuming this was all supposed to be an attractive feature with the defenceless young woman is rescued by a handsome savage where he proceeds to ravish her, but apart from its racist nature, it becomes so repetitive.
There is also a lot of unnecessary shaming in this story, and yes I know its 1989 in a rural town and its apparent her aunt was very repressive, but its so over the top that the behaviour becomes unrealistic. Even in 1989 I don’t see how a woman can be ashamed that she’s ‘caught red handed’….teaching a child, even if he is mature for his age. Do the town folk really believe she’d be bumping uglies with him? Doubtful.
So, if you completely ignore all the half-breed shenanigans thrown in every other sentence, this is at its bare bones, a love at first sight romance novel. Wolf is pretty possessive, but this is fairly well reciprocated by Mary and at no point does she shy away from his affections. They do have good chemistry and the horizontal tango scenes are hot.
Overall, it’s a fun story. There’s a decent little side plot about some guy terrorising the town and how they crack the case. I realise its extremely out of date, but if you can skip those bits and appreciate the rest of the writing, its not bad and even enjoyable.