Reviewed by Wendy Lipke
Weathering the Storm is the latest book by Queensland writer Mandy Magro who has been producing books in the romance genre since 2011. She writes with authority using insights from her own previous adventures. As a passionate woman and a romantic at heart, Mandy loves writing about soul-deep love, the Australian rural way of life, and the wonderful characters who call the country home.
At its heart, this is a love story for the country which she calls home as well as the characters she has chosen to portray. Her descriptions of the country are detailed and beautiful whether she is describing the rainforest area of the Atherton Tableland, the vibrant hustle and bustle of Sydney or the majesty of the colourful outback.
The story she presents has all the elements a reader would enjoy. There is broken young love, the tough rodeo cowboy and an independent woman journalist who wants to cement her place in this competitive world. There are strong family ties and some underhand tactics in a corporate world.
Past cowboy, Mason Wilde, has settled on his father’s property in the outback and, although he loves what he does and where he is, he wishes to find someone he can build a future with. Knowing there is little opportunity for a busy man on the land to socialise, his brother signs him up for a new reality show, Way Out Yonder Wife.
Montana Walker, who is still a country girl at heart but now lives in Sydney, has been assigned as the journalist to cover the filming and the behind-the-scenes antics of this show out on the Wilde property. This is not her usual assignment, but she is persuaded to take it as a means of furthering her career. She soon discovers though that she and the leading man in this show have a history which, however much she has tried, she cannot dismiss. As you can imagine, what follows is linked to the title of the book, Weathering the Storm.
The story is engaging, and the use of introspection helps fill in the gaps for the reader. The chapters alternately take the story from the point of view of the two key characters. Their individual soul searching, insecurities and determined modes of behaviour are revealed. Their strengths and weaknesses are clearly shown as well as their determination to call out wrong behaviour in others. This all leads to a tension that is clear, even though the author feels that it must be explained.
Although the writing is beautiful and detailed revealing the unique beauty of the Australian landscape, I became a little disappointed with the excessive use of descriptive adjectives, similes and metaphors and overly effusive language. In trying to promote the Australianness of the novel, I feel that some of the local sayings did not fit the characters with their particular lifestyles. Words such as ‘okey-dokey’, ‘bloody ripper’ and ‘scared the bejesus out of her’, for me, seemed out of place with the polish of the storytelling. [In this story I came across a word I had never encountered before – ‘cleant’ (306)]. At times I felt like I was reading a Mills and Boon story, yet the issues faced by the characters and everyday life descriptions are very much of the 21st Century with delivered meals and working from home scenarios.
Weathering the Storm
(2025)
by Mandy Magro
HQ Fiction (HarperCollins)
ISBN:978-1-0389-0878-0
$32.99; 346pp