Review: When Mountains Sing by Stacy Monson

My rating: 3 stars / I liked it

Synopsis

When the truth cost her everything, she thought there was nothing left to lose.

Mikayla Gordon loves nothing more than sleeping under the stars, reeling in the “big one,” and long hikes in the wilderness. A medical crisis reveals a 30-year-old secret that turns everything she’s known and believed upside down, unraveling her dreams and her identity.

In search of answers, she follows a trail from Minnesota to Colorado and discovers more unwelcome secrets even as she falls in love with the majestic beauty of the Rocky Mountains, and a wilderness camp leader who shares the greatest secret of all.

Knowing her life can never go back to what it was, she must make decisions that will impact far more than just her future.

My Review

I'm torn on this book- there are things I liked about it, and things that bothered me. It was difficult for me to get involved in the story and invested in the characters at first, I think because there was a lot of mundane in the narrative. When Mikayla steals DNA from her family members for a DNA test I thought that was pretty unethical, and then her extreme over the top reaction was off-putting. I thought it was strange that she wanted answers but wouldn't listen to anything from the people who had the answers she was looking for. Once she was off on her adventure, calmed down, and got a job at the camp while she waited for someone to return to Colorado, I felt like the real character building began. I was interested in her friendship with Dawson and how he gently led her to a place where she could open up to her fears and turn to God with them. I didn't feel any romantic chemistry on her end- she seemed ambivalent about developing a long-term relationship with him because she had plans to leave. I appreciated the messages of faith and the way Mikayla enjoys her hands-on job of helping the youth fall in love with the outdoors versus writing about it for a magazine. Overall, I think with tighter content editing and more expression from Mikayla about her feelings for Dawson, this would be a fabulous book.

(I received a complimentary copy of the book; all opinions in this review are my own)