Review – Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis

The lovely people at Chicken House have kindly asked me to be part of the How Do You Like Your Romance Blog Tour featuring Darkmere by Helen Maslin and Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis.

I have recently read and loved Crow Mountain and have read the wonderful Darkmere a few months ago also.  Both are brilliant reads and I highly recommend picking up a copy of both!

Today I am reviewing the breath-taking Crow Mountain!

You can also check out my Darkmere blog tour post where I share an exclusive extract from the book here

Check out my review of Darkmere here

Or check out inspiration and a deleted prologue from Darkmere here

Do you like your romance Epic and Sweeping……

While on holiday in Montana, Hope meets local boy Cal Crow, a ranch-hand. Caught in a freak accident, the two of them take shelter in a mountain cabin where Hope makes a strange discovery. More than a hundred years earlier, another English girl met a similar fate. Her rescuer: a horse-trader called Nate. In this wild place, both girls learn what it means to survive and to fall in love, neither knowing that their fates are intimately entwined.

Publisher – Chicken House

Published – 3rd September 2015

Pages – 416 pages

Format – Paperback

Category – Historical Fiction, Romance

Source – I was sent a copy of this book by the wonderful publishers Chicken House.  This does not affect my review or my opinions in any way and am delighted to write an honest review.  A huge thank you to Chicken House for sending me this book to review.

** Please note Tales Of Yesterday Reviews are written as spoiler free as possible**

I was lucky enough to have been invited to the Chicken House Blogger Brunch back in July where I got to hear a bit more about Crow Mountain from both Barry Cunningham and the author Lucy Inglis herself and it left me super intrigued to read the book.

I have to say I was not disappointed. Even after hearing about it at the brunch this book still fully surprised me in the most wonderful way possible.

My heart was swept away by Lucy’s fantastic writing style combining historical fiction with present day in breath-taking alternate chapters.

Crow Mountain tells the story of two girls, Hope in present day and Emily in the past in a kind of diary written style and revolves around them meeting two boys, Cal and Nate.

In present day Londoner Hope is very much controlled by Meredith, her environmental scientist mother, who takes Hope with her on a research trip to Montana in the USA where they stay on a huge Ranch. Whilst there Hope befriends Cal who shows her around the ranch, it’s animals and tells Hope some of the history surrounding their beautiful habitat. This is where Hope discovers a diary from 1867 written by a girl named Emily who is on her way from London to Montana to marry a suitor arranged by her parents. After a terrible accident Emily is found by a horse trader named Nate and what pursues is a touching story with similarities that echo the present day events with Hope and Cal.

I really enjoyed the way that from a reader’s point of view we are ahead of the historical side of the story pre Hope finding the diary and we get to experience Hope and Cal’s reaction to everything that we have read.

I found the historical side of the book really intriguing and I was blown away by the amount of historical research that must have gone into this book. I got to learn about a way of life, culture and a time that I did not know much about. I cheered with joy during a battle between Native Indians and the bad guys. I shed tears over the death of many buffalo.  I became intrigued my the legend of a horse of a lifetime.   And I fell in love with Nate as much as Emily does. I really felt that Lucy Inglis catapulted me into the 1800’s . The imagery that is created is spectacular and wonderfully written.

I found the present day story more of bump back to reality and I really felt how Hope was mesmerised by the story she was reading in the diary.

Whilst my favourite character was Nate *swoons* I really liked a character we meet in the middle of the book called Rose!  She is so comfortable in her own skin and such a memorable character it was lovely and often funny to read.  I feel that we all need a Rose in our lives.

On the flip side of the coin Hope’s Mom Meredith was really dislikeable.  She is very controlling of her daughter and it’s almost suffocating.

Crow Mountain to me was a story about two women who lead very suffocating different lives and are pushed beyond limits out of their comfort zones, but in turn this changes them and it allows them to learn who they want to be.  You see these two wonderful characters develop throughout the story and like Rose become comfortable in who they are like a butterfly breaking free of it’s cocoon.

“I’m getting the feeling you and I are from whole different worlds” Nate

And that ending! OMG! My lips are sealed! The last few chapters of the book had me very misty eyed indeed where the similarities and the coming together of things began to tie up.  You get this feeling in your gut that you know what’s coming and I had everything crossed that I was wrong!

I really highly recommend Crow Mountain for something different and especially to people who enjoy historical fiction and with two sweeping, epic romances people will fall in love with the book, the characters and the world that Lucy Inglis has created.

I award this book 4 out of 5 Tales Of Yesterday Books!

Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis is out now and published by Chicken House. For more information visit chickenhousebooks.com 

You can buy Crow Mountain here

Or why not add it to Goodreads here

Find out some inspiration behind Crow Mountain here

About Lucy Inglis

I’m a historian and novelist, a speaker, and occasionally a television presenter and voice in the radio.

Between 2009 and 2013 I created the Georgian London blog, the largest free body of work on the eighteenth century city online, and my book about the same. My book, Georgian London: Into the Streets, was published by Viking for Penguin in 2013 and shortlisted for the History Today Longman Prize. Described variously as, ‘a great read by a talented new historian’, ‘something quite delicious’, ‘packed to the brim with the minutiae of life’, and my personal favourite, ‘If you could cram all your Georgian facts into a large glass and drink it, here it is, the flavour reeking of sex, booze, coffee, tea, dismembered whale parts, rot and riot’. ‘Her passionate curiosity and love for the city rise off the page like smoke’, and it’s out now in hardback and paperback from wherever you like to buy your books.

As of 2014, I am writing Milk of Paradise, a book on opium’s past and present, for Macmillan.

My first novel, City of Halves, came out with Chicken House in April 2014 and has been longlisted for the Carnegie Medal and the Branford Boase award. In autumn 2015, Chicken House will publish Crow Mountain, a novel about the birth of the state of Montana, set between 1867 and the present day, as two young women cut the binds of family and society to discover who they really are, and where they belong.

Sometimes, I am on television or Radio 3 or 4. On screen, I presented Fight Club: A History of Violence, about female bare-knuckle boxing in gin-soaked Georgian London and was on the Great British Bake Off, talking about the history of cookery writing. I was in Grave Trade for the History Channel and the Georgians series for the BBC, which were part of the 300th anniversary of George I coming to the throne in 2014.

When not doing any of the above and sometimes when I should be, I can be found messing about on twitter, where I am far more likely to talk about none of the above in favour of the serious social problems of our time, such as hipsters.

You can follow Lucy on Twitter using @lucyinglis

Or check out Lucy’s website – lucyinglis.com

Blog Tour

How do you like your romance?

You check out a fab extract from Crow Mountain here

Find out more about Darkmere in my review here

Or catch up or follow the rest of this fab blog tour here!

Darkmere by Helen Maslin and Crow Mountain by Lucy Inglis are out now and published by Chicken House. For more information visit chickenhousebooks.com 

A huge thank you to Laura at Chicken House for inviting me to be part of this fab blog tour!

Have you read Crow Mountain?  What did you think?  Has this review intrigued you enough into buying a copy?  Do you have any favourite romance stories?  I would love to hear from you!  Why not leave a comment using the reply button at the top of the page or tweet me on twitter using @chelleytoy !

Happy Reading….*swoons*