Montana Dreams by Kim Law Release Date: September 25, 2018 Publisher: Montlake Romance Book #4 in the Wildes of Birch Bay series Number of Pages: 312 Kindle Edition Source: ARC from Net Galley Contemporary Romance M/F Rating: NC-17 Read 9/13/18 to 9/14/18
With how much I’ve been loving this series, imagine my joy when I was able to snag an ARC from Net Galley of this story. Being as this also means I’m caught up in this series and will have to wait awhile for the next book after this one, it’s a little bittersweet.
I said it before and I’ll say it again. Go back and start at the beginning of this series, Montana Cherries, before reading this book. This is one of those series that is best read from the beginning and in order. There are so many things that happen to the characters and so many things revealed about their childhood as the stories progress, you’d really be missing out if you don’t read them all.
Jaden is the baby of the family and was quite young when their mom died. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t remember or that she didn’t leave him with scars. He is also the one that first realized that their mother had been mentally ill and her actions had messed up the rest of the family in a long-term way. Since Jaden is a getting his Masters in Psychology, he also got himself into counseling right away and spent years slogging through his past with a counselor. But does that mean he’s “cured” or that there aren’t still underlying issues from his childhood? What do you think?
Arsula blew into town in the last book, Montana Mornings, and caught my attention right away. She has a gift of reading people’s dreams. Turns out, it’s much more than that. Arsula is a very intuitive and compassionate person and people are drawn to her. Even Jaden is drawn to her even though he has reason to dislike her. And her methods of helping people in their lives goes against his intellectual book learning ideas. None of that matters in the grand scheme of things since there is a deep connection between Jaden and Arsula regardless of them trying to deny their chemistry.
It surprised me that Jaden is kind of a jerk. Being the baby of the family and knowing that he was raised by Dani more than by their mom, I thought he’d be a bit of a softy. As things play out, the reasons he acts out start to make sense, but it was still surprising to me. The good thing is, Jaden does (eventually) start to see for himself that he can be a selfish jerk. Plus, he has to also be a pretty good person when he’s not in a jerky mood since even his ex-girlfriend still wants to be his friend.
The issues with Jaden’s mom were at the forefront of this story and his problems, but the things she actually did to him felt almost glossed over. One of the things about this series that really gripped me was the experiences the Dalton siblings had as children. We get a bit of an inside look to Jaden’s upbringing before his mom passed away, but we don’t get a lot of details. And I missed those details. I feel for Jaden, but I couldn’t help but think I’m missing something. Although, because of other things happening in this story I almost think we’ll get more of what happened to Jaden when we get Nate’s story.
Nate is the other brother (other than Jaden) that we haven’t seen much of until this book. It seems his wandering ways have become a bit more settled. There are things I wondered about Nate and what he was up to that were addressed in this story and denied, but I’m not quite sure if I believe the denials. We shall see.
Although this story didn’t hit me quite as deep as the previous books in this series, it is still a great read. This author is amazing with expressing the emotions of her characters and really draws me into her tales.
4 stars
**I received an ARC of this book courtesy of Net Galley and the publisher. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and given freely**
All In Good Time 