Review of Strawberry Hill (Mystic Creek #5) by Catherine Anderson
Strawberry Hill is the fourth book in the series Mystic Creek.
Vickie Brown and Slade Wilder have history. She broke off their engagement forty-one years ago, and has now signed up to be a camp cook for Slade—without him knowing it's her. Vickie intends to confront him during her time running the camp kitchen and ask questions she's long needed answers to.
Slade's niece, Erin, has moved to Mystic Creek to work in the Sheriff's department. She has little time to see her uncle and is having a hard time adjusting to small-town life after many years on the force in Seattle. She meets Wyatt, Slade's ranch foreman, in a spectacularly unpleasant encounter in the wilderness. She wants to smooth things over, but is unsure how.
Although I've loved several of the books in this series, I did not like this book. Plain and simple.
It took me so long to get through this book that I had to renew it at the library twice (three weeks per checkout) and came to a halt at 72% of the way through, according to my e-reader. I just couldn't keep going.
I found Vickie to be unlikable. She left Slade based on the word of someone she barely knew about him being unfaithful instead of listening to him when he said he was innocent. She made excuses as to why she didn't try harder to tell Slade about their son and instead demonized him and lied to the boy about who his father was, telling him he had the same father as his siblings—an abusive man who regularly beat him.
After forty years, she decided to confront Slade by taking on a job as the camp cook while hiding the fact that it was her, then exploded at him when he understandably didn't want to employ her. She then spent the rest of the time I was reading playing childish practical jokes and planning her confrontation that would result in her leaving camp early, ruining his reputation with his paying clients.
She was completely unlikable. Petulant and childish.
The only character that I 100% liked was Four-Toes, the blonde black bear that Slade saved from a trap as a cub and it now follows him around.
Then we have Erin and Wyatt. I liked both of them, but nothing happened. They had dinner together that we didn't get to see, only a text from her to Wyatt later.
I read 72% of a romance novel and saw zero romance. There was untapped potential with Erin and Wyatt, and it frustrated me that nothing was happening.
So I looked at reviews of the book on Goodreads. Essentially, what I saw was that many people loved it, Erin and Wyatt's relationship didn't end in romance in this book, and things worked out between Vickie and Slade. Then I checked to see what the next book is about, and to my surprise, it's about Erin and Wyatt. Since I liked them and the story looks good, I skipped to the epilogue, read that, and called it good.
Honestly, if the series didn't have such a good track record with me and I didn't want to read book six, I would have just turned it in with a big DNF (did not finish) in Goodreads and this review. But I just couldn't make myself read this book anymore. I rarely dislike books, but this one I did. But it's over now and I can move on to the next book.
While I recommend this series, this book was a flop for me.
Comments
Post a Comment