"Montana Rose" by Mary Connealy

 


I grew up reading westerns, and every now and then I like to read one for old time's sake. I'm also a sucker for marriage of convenience stories, so the combination enticed me as soon as I read this book's description. A pregnant woman is widowed one day and married the next? I wanted to find out more.

Cassie Griffin has never been allowed to have a thought in her head that wasn't placed there by someone else, and usually by her newly deceased husband. Griff is no sooner in the ground than she is literally circled by men wanting to marry her, as women are scarce on the Montana prairie and Cassie is as pretty as they come. Seeing her hand will be forced to choose one of these men, Cassie chooses the one who makes her skin crawl the least, and immediately sets to learning how to do everything exactly the way he wants.

Red Dawson has always thought Cassie was a beautiful woman, but he didn't want to marry her. Not with her reputation of being quite spoiled, or with her questionable belief in the God that Red serves. But when he saw her surrounded by men who would never consider her best interests, Red threw his hat into the marriage market and wound up hitched to the lovely and naive young woman. He finds Cassie eager to help but almost comically helpless. She's not spoiled, she's just never been allowed to do anything or think anything or say anything that wasn't approved by someone else. He begins trying to teach her that as she is safe in his care, she is free to learn how to be herself instead of the image that was always thrust upon her in the past.

This book takes quite an effective look at what it is like to come out from a controlling situation and the challenges one faces with that. The writing style was simplistic, and I wondered if that was done to reflect the way Cassie's thinking had been molded. However, the simplicity worked against it for me as a reader because everyone's motives were so obvious and overstated that it wasn't nuanced at all. There were two side plots that also disturbed me - one about Cassie's lack of knowledge about the intimacies of marriage and birthing babies, and the other was danger from a local rancher who was obsessed with Cassie and who stalked the Dawsons' cabin looking for an opportunity to kill Red and take Cassie for himself. Since most of the book was written so simply that a child could read it, those felt way too adult and overplayed. I would only recommend this book to those above age 16.

I never felt invested personally in the characters, although I was thoroughly intrigued by minor character Belle Tanner Santoni and I'm in the middle of her book now. Stay tuned for that review in another week or so.