Book 990: Montana Sky (Montana #6) – R.J. Scott

This was by far my least favorite novel even though it was a return to the ranch with everything in the book happening there (except one scene). Only one of the protagonists was connected to the story at all, Martin, the kid of Adam Justin’s kidnappers who experienced just as much abuse and torment as they did. The other protagonist, Tyler, is a random seismologist (I think), who happened to realize there was a hole in the seismology network and convinced Nate, from book one, to let him put a detector on Crooked Tree Ranch property.

We’d previously met Martin as he was the last person on Justin’s list to kill from his time being held hostage and tormented. Justin obviously chose not to kill him, which has tormented Martin ever since. That torment finally drove him to Crooked Tree Ranch and Justin, similar to how he did with his partner, Rob from book five, forced Martin to stay until he’d started to recover from the trauma while working and seeing everyone healthy and happy.

The love story was all sort of meh. Much of that was due to my not connecting with either character. Don’t get me wrong there were a few hot moments and quite a bit of humor (if a bit dry), but for the most part, it was just sort of mediocre. My favorite part of the novel was the glimpses we got of the other characters.

Random aside, this novel did introduce me to angel aura quartz which is stunning and I’d never heard of it before. I seriously want to buy one just to have one.

Recommendation:  As I’ve said at least once before after the first novel this series was meh for me. I think this stems from it being less a western and more a crime novel for the bulk of the series even if it did take place and everyone was tied together because of the ranch. I will say for the most part they were well-written, edited, and proofread. They just weren’t for me. I’ll definitely add Scott to my list of decent authors to keep an eye out for, especially on Kindle Unlimited or when I need a quick read and cross my fingers I like the story better 😀

Opening Line: “Martin briefly stopped on the stone bridge and tipped his head to the sky.”

Closing Line: “Really he had only one thing to say to the man who’d stolen his heart. ‘I love you too.'” (Whited out to avoid spoilers, highlight to read.)

Additional Quotes from Montana Sky
“Then one day he’d had thrown his five-year-old son, Jamie, out of the cabin with a pup tent and nothing else. You’ll live or die, I ain’t got no time for sickly useless kids.” (50)

“It sounded to Martin as if Tyler was using words with limited syllables, probably imagining that Martin wouldn’t understand anything too technical. There was no way he was going to disabuse that notion, because then he’d have to explain how he’d gotten his degree in math, and elaborate on how his freaky brain worked.” (63)