Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis - OPTIONAL

Inglis, Lucy Crow Mountain, 368 pages.  Chicken House (Scholastic), 2016.  $18.  

Language:  R (67 swears, 4 ‘f’); Mature Content: PG-13 (implied sex more than once); Violence: PG (scalping mentioned).

Emily is traveling across Montana by stage coach with her chaperone in order to meet up with her fiancée on the west coast.  During a freak accident, everyone on the coach is killed except Emily, who is rescued by a reclusive young man, a Native American, who has no time to take Emily to civilization and no pity for her pampered ways.

Modern-day Hope has traveled to Montana with her researcher mother.  When she takes a short trip with the son of the rancher whose property they are visiting, they meet with an accident and find refuge in a long abandoned cabin.  There Hope finds a journal, Emily’s journal.  As she reads, Hope sees eerie parallels between her circumstances and Emily’s circumstances from long ago.

I wanted to like this book so much, because I am a big fan of historical fiction, but as I got to the end, all I could think about was Emily as a victim of Stockholm syndrome and Hope was in a similar situation.  Neither “romance” ever rang true to me, especially since both of the girls go straight from kissing a boy for the first time ever to straight into their beds. 

HS – OPTIONAL.  

Cindy, Library Teacher