Cameron Hart, $2.99, ISBN 979-8223471196
Contemporary Romance, 2023
In Cameron Hart’s Healing Her Mountain Man, our heroine Brooklyn’s womb comes to life and practically sends out a Bat-Signal—or maybe Cat-Signal in this case—when she hears that her crush with the mostest, Ryker, is back in town.
No, he’s not a porn actor. He’s actually military, although don’t worry, I’m sure he will vote for President “I’m Starting Wars to Keep the Military Afloat!” Brandon later this year, so one won’t get MAGA cooties from reading this.
“I said Ryker is going to be staying with us for a bit. He got hurt and needs a place to recover.”
“Oh my God, what happened?” My stomach is in knots thinking about all the danger he faced while deployed overseas and what could have happened to him
“He’s okay. I guess he fucked up his leg. Some shrapnel or something from an IED. He’s coming back for physical therapy and needs a place to crash and regroup.”
Ryker’s BFF is Gunnar, so I suppose him sleeping with his BFF’s sister is just part of how things are in this Podunk of a mountain town. As expected of a hero of this archetype, he gets the shakies-shakies that can only be cured by some pumpy-wumpies in a worthy woman’s safe space.
Initially, he’s grouchy because he can’t recognize Brooklyn and assumes that she’s the latest squeeze of his BFF. Once he realizes that she’s free game, it’s time to let that missile fly…
Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.
Ryker is here. He’s here and he’s flirting with me. Or, he was flirting with me until this rowdy group of kids came in. If I’m not mistaken, he was totally checking me out. I’m glad he seemed as dumbstruck as I was. But maybe I’m just reading into that what I want.
How old is Brooklyn again? Her inner monologues have me pegged her as 14, again, probably par for the course when it comes to marriages in that part of the world, but I’d hate to see Ryker’s surly PTSD-ridden ass gets hauled to jail for statutory rape.
Anyway, this is a pretty standard “surly injured man healed by love” story. There are some good things about this story, such as how it is a clean and easy read.
The hero and other characters pointing out the heroine’s various immature moments to indicate that the author is somewhat self-aware when it comes to the story. Then again, it can also be argued that such self-awareness serves no purpose if the heroine continued to act that way anyway throughout the rest of the story.
However, as I’ve mentioned, the heroine acts and sounds like a teenage girl lacking in maturity in many instances, and the chapters from her point of view can make me feel like bubbles are forming in my brain cavity. She seems to hero worship Ryker instead of having mature romantic feelings for him, and the romance as a result is a composite of 60% lust, 20% her babysitting him, and 20% of him repaying her with stud service.
The biggest possible obstacle to one’s enjoyment of this story, though, is the hero’s recovery from his physical and mental wounds through his steamy stroke sessions in the heroine’s UwU therapy chamber instead of actual physical therapy and shrink sessions. I know, I know, in the romance genre, a heroine’s hoo-hoo can save galaxies from destruction, but come on, at least make it such that she knows exotic sex secrets that can blow a man’s mind in order to sell that premise—which, of course, isn’t the case with this particular heroine.
In the end, I’m somewhat confused by this story. Sure, the premise isn’t anything new, but it seems indeed like the author is going out of her way to make it harder for me to take the story seriously or buy the romance that she is selling here. I can only wonder about the workings of the author’s mind—what is she aiming to achieve with this thing?
