Publisher: Berkley (Penguin Random House)
ISBN: 978-0-593-33557-4
Subject: Romance
Fourteen-year-old Junebug McBride, feeling suffocated by the amount of chores she does for her four older brothers, puts out a matrimony advertisement for her second oldest brother, Kit. Best part? He doesn't know anything about it until his "wife" stumbles into a rabbit hole, figuratively and literally, on their Montana land. The "wife" is a young lady named Maddy Mooney, an unpaid maid far from her birthplace in Ireland. The story builds between various viewpoints of these three characters, with the main romance starting halfway through the book. The romance builds slowly until an unfavorable character reenters the story, causing minor problems. Ultimately, the books ends the way most romance novels do: Kit and Maddy get married.
Where to start? First off, it's a romance. But a good one. It's not erotic or even wildly passionate. "Intimate" would be a good word for the romance between the main characters. It definitely has its tropes and clichés, but it works in this story. The most interesting character, by far, is Junebug. She's a wild child with a lot to say. She's also smart and perceptive. The story arc is kind of flat, with no real build-up, but a good introduction to the romance genre, especially for a more prude reader. Those into thrilling romances will find it boring. The writing is okay, though the author uses unnecessarily big words throughout. It fits in with Junebug's and Kit's characters, but not for Maddy.
The author did a good job on her research of what Montana is like and how people in different cultures responded to various situations. She also did a good job portraying the time period, especially in different settings.
I would probably give it a 6/10 in it's own genre (romance books don't break 2 in my general reading scale).
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