✰ Bianca ✰ Janeane ✰ 
• 30 April 2019
• standalone Alaska Dramance
with shades of a Christian Romance :(
★★★
3 Stars
3 Stars
From the number one New York Times bestselling author of the
Thoughtless series comes a sweet, thoughtful romance set high in the Alaskan
wilderness.
Mallory
Reynolds is a driven woman fueled by her passion for photographing wild animals
in remote locations. Every year she makes a trek deep into Alaska, but this
time the unthinkable happens: she crash-lands after her plane stalls out in a
storm. Injured, vulnerable, and threatened by the very creatures she loves,
Mallory fears the worst—until she’s rescued by Michael Bradley, a
mysterious mountain man living in self-imposed exile.
Mallory
is grateful for Michael’s help but desperate to return home to let her family
know she’s alive. Unfortunately, neither of them can leave Michael’s secluded
cabin until spring. Mallory’s stuck with a stranger for months.
Mallory is on her way to the Alaskan wild. She does that every year. She goes up there to take pictures of wild animals. That's her job and her passion.
But this year the weather is not on her side - an unforseen storm makes her crash the plane.
She has to fight injuries, bears, wolves, and the horrible cold weather for a very dangerous while. But then she's saved by Michael. He heard the plane go down and made his way through the snow to see what's what.
He's been living out here for five years.
But why?
Mallory is fascinated by the man. She doesn't want to ask him, but since they have to stay in his cabin until spring, she might get him to talk about his life .... and she might fall for him - but he's never going to leave this place - or can she convince him to start living again?
WHAT WiLL HAPPEN TO MALLORY & MICHAEL?
WILL THERE BE A HEA?
____________________
I'm such a huge #KellanKyle fan - he's still my number one book boyfriend of all time - so anything that follows in his footsteps will have a hard time with me ... But I will definitely try ... almost anything.
I'm the biggest hater of anything to do with religion! And since I unfortunately read some reviews of this book on goodreads, I was pretty sure I was going to hate this story.
And yeah, the praying and touching her cross necklace starts pretty early into the story and it pretty much never stops - it only gets worse once she tries to find out how Michael lost his faith .... I didn't like it. Not one bit.
BUT - I also really wanted to keep on reading because I wanted to know why Michael checked out of his old life and what happened to him and how they would fall for each other and how the story would end.
It was hard - there was a lot of praying and faith talk. It would've been too much for me with almost any author, but it's a book by Kellan's mom and it was somewhat exciting here and there, so I didn't want to stop reading. But I constantly felt like some missionary wanted to recruit me for their cult.
Ewww.
But when we look past the whole faith sh*t. The story wasn't really all that amazing either. Nothing I haven't read in dozens of wilderness/snowed-in romance books before. Yes, it definitely had its exciting and suspensy and dangerous and romantic and heartbreaking and adorable and fun moments. But I was expecting so much more. So much more emotion and love and surprise. There's almost nothing here. No real sexiness, just some church-camp kind of tame kissing. The whole quiet and serene atmosphere has this 'holy' kind of feel to it. Ugh.
The end was better - once Mallory finally leaves, it got a bit better. I even cried some tears.☺
If I had to say anything about how this book would be sold/marketed, I would either sell it exclusively as a Christian Romance (ewww). Or have a very atheist editor go through it again and remove most of that praying and god stuff and add a bit more excitement and love and chemistry, maybe even a few chapters from Michael's POV and mayyyybe make it so his wife was ??? killed while on a date with her secret boyfriend? That way we could hate her and he could too, because the way it is, falling for Mallory feels too much like cheating for Michael and the reader - even though it's been many years.
OK. I don't want to make future readers run away screaming. Please read this book. It's a pretty ok snow adventure romance thingy. There were definitely good moments. But for me, today, there was just not enough to fall in love with this book and the people in it. Sorry.
UNDER THE NORTHERN LIGHTS was a sweet & exciting Alaska snow romance! Run to your nearest amazon for your own Michael!
... another thing that bothered me - and it's just me being weird again, I know that ...
Some authors use expressions that they learned back home, from grandma etc. and it's totally ok to use them in your books, BUT if you do, I think only one character should use them, not all of them. Especially when they're strangers from different parts of the country and haven't grown up together!
In this case (like in all of her books) it was EVEN STILL & SO LONG AS. Ugh, I hate these two expressions!
_______________________
Copy received via Netgalley for an honest review
I did see, prior to picking up this book to read, reviews saying there was lot of religious aspects to this story - usually an insta-NO for me.
However, as this was a SC Stephens book, I decided to read this one.
And whilst I kind of liked it, it was also kind of meh for me. Not just for the religious overtones either.
I think the main thing that didn't do it for me was Mallory.
I liked Michael, I loved how he stuck by his thoughts and what he wanted to do. I hated that Mallory pushed him to do things different, didn't take no for an answer, then when he asked her to do something, she was like nope, not happening. Pot, meet kettle.
The whole story just felt a little light on... everything. I don't know, this one just wasn't for me (and I hate saying that, because this is Kellan Kyle's mum).
↓Links to the book & Author ↓
