2.5 ⭐️, it was ok
Genre/subgenre: MF x 3 vintage (1996) contemporary romance with thriller/suspense thrown in, some fade to black and some open door sex scenes, but mostly not very explicit
Narration: third person omniscient, past tense
Tropes and Rep: virgin FMC
TW: domestic violence (recalled), animal mutilation, rape

Jack Mercy left his ranch to his three daughters, if they live on the ranch together for a year.  Sounds easy?  Well, you need to know that he had thrown out his first two wives and their daughters, and likely would have done the same with the third, except she died first.  So the three half sisters don’t know each other and living on the ranch will upset the elder two sisters’ lives.  And what do you know, there just so happen to be three men handy for the three sisters to fall in love with.

I was in my thirties in 1996, and I was a romance reader, but I wasn’t reading what was being published at the time, so as improbable as it seems, this is the first Nora Roberts novel I’ve read.  It makes it clear to me how conservative a genre romance is (or at least was), because the attitudes feel more like the (probably inaccurate perception I have of) 1950s than the 1990s as I experienced them.  The gender roles are so stereotypical.  Many of the characters feel like caricatures, especially a one-dimensional evil villain.  The psychological takes feel so shallow.  There is some fetishization of the Native American characters.  There is what I can only describe as a deflowering scene: “She gave up her innocence without regret, with a smile bowing her lips as she matched him stroke for slow stroke.” 

It might sound like I hated Montana Sky, but I actually liked it, at least somewhat.  What annoyed me about the book was obvious, I had to think harder to begin to understand why I liked it anyway (and I suspect that I haven’t identified all of the strengths).  The story is multi-layered.  It doesn’t restrict itself to romance tropes and rhythms.  I enjoyed the depiction of ranch life and Montana.  Roberts also shows us three very different women gradually forming a familial bond.