Buttermilk Sky by Jan Watson

Read an excerpt here

Weary of the expectations imposed on her by her strict upbringing, eighteen-year-old Mazy Pelfrey prepares to leave her home in the Kentucky mountains for the genteel city of Lexington, where she’ll attend secretarial school. She knows her life is about to change—and only for the better. Everything will be blue skies from now on.

But business school is harder than she thought it would be and the big city not as friendly, until she meets a charming young man from a wealthy family, Loyal Chambers. When Loyal sets his sights on her, Mazy begins to see that everything she’d ever wished to have is right before her eyes. The only hindrance to her budding romance is a former beau, Chanis Clay, the young sheriff she thought she’d left firmly behind.

Danger rumbles like thunder on a high mountain ridge when Mazy’s cosseted past collides with her clouded future and forces her to come to terms with what she really wants.

If you have read Skip Rock Shallows or Tattler's Branch, you will be excited to finally read a novel that focuses on primarily Mazy, Lilly's younger sister, and Chanis. Both of these characters have appearances in previous novels, but this is the first time they are the main characters. While Buttermilk Sky could be read on its own, I felt like the character development in this novel was rather limited. I understood more about these characters from previous novels, there was certainly more character development for both Chanis and Mazy in this novel. The other characters in this novel received absolutely no development at all, and at several points I thought they completely detracted from the story because I was too busy trying to figure out how they connected and what their role was. Loyal was a terrible addition as a potential beau because he completely lacked dimension and was completely unbelievable in his role as a result. Cinnamon was a cute character, but I thought she completely detracted from the story at hand and could have been developed into the story in a much better way.

The pace of this novel was also rather drawn out, and it was hard for me to stay involved in the story at times. However, once the story reached the climax, the speed picks up so much that I had no idea what was going on and the resolution seemed completely unbelievable. I wish the story had moved at a quicker pace to begin with so that the author could have spent more time on the ending. The epilogue was disappointing at best.

Overall, I was not a huge fan of Buttermilk Sky. I have loved all of the other Jan Watson novels I have read, so if this is your first time reading her novels, I would highly recommend reading her other works instead if you are disappointed with this read.

I received this novel from Tyndale House Publishers in exchange for an honest review.