Review by Stacey O’Carroll
Author: Amy Barry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
RRP: $22.99
Release Date: 3 April 2024
“Well, spit. How was Junebug to know flour was flammable?”
Teenage Junebug McBride has had enough of cooking and cleaning for her ungrateful older brothers in the isolated Buck’s Creek, Montana. So, when she is asked to write an advertisement looking for a wife for one of the local men, she secretly decides to do the same for her know-it-all brother Kit. Junebug knows a wife for Kit will get him off her back and means someone else can cook and clean for them. What could possibly go wrong?
“She reached under the counter and pulled out her sign: Junebug McBride, Public Letter Writer.”
Amy Barry’s (who also writes under Amy T Williams and Tess Lesue) Kit McBride Gets a Wife, the first novel in the McBride’s of Montana series, is a funny and cute frontier romance set in 1886 Montana. Given that a western or frontier romance is not usually a genre I am drawn to in my local bookstore, I was surprised how much I enjoyed delving into feisty Junebug’s life. Something I believe comes down to the care Amy has for her protagonist. Coming off the back of Amy’s beautiful and heart-wrenching recent novel, Someone Else’s Bucket List (published under Amy T Williams), Kit McBride Gets a Wife felt like a fun gallop through the American Wild West.
Amy’s characters could easily be one-dimensional, but their personalities are so varied and vivid that they ride off the page and into the reader’s imagination. Junebug is just as quirky as her name suggests, is often underestimated by her brothers and, at times, overpowers the other main characters. While Kit’s love interest, Maddy Mooney’s unfortunate circumstances after leaving Ireland are amusing, the witty personality and wild antics of Junebug meant I was searching for her return to the page when the focus shifted.
“Maddy Mooney had been born under an unlucky star. Possibly more than one.”
Amy’s use of Western romance conventions is very to the letter and perhaps could have pushed the genre a little more to provide a few unexpected moments. However, it was clear to this reviewer that Amy dives into the deep end of her research and appears to embody her characters while writing her novels. The dialogue of the characters is distinct to the era and location of the story, which helps create an evocative setting even for readers not familiar with the hardships of the harsh terrain and life in Montana in the late nineteenth century. Although I am not familiar with the Montana landscape, given the plethora of classic Western movies available and Amy’s evocative descriptions of the extreme climate, visualising the sparse landscape is relatively easy.
While I suspect the novel (and subsequent McBride series) is mostly targeted at American readers, there’s still something for Tasman readers looking to escape the overwhelming aspects of our current world. Sometimes, we need an easy-to-read, fun escape. And this is what Amy’s Kit McBride Gets A Wife is for readers. So, saddle up your horse and gallop to your nearest bookstore to get your copy.