Review: More Romance from Ellery Mountain. can I move there?
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 07 25, 2013
Imagine a small town in the mountains, where all the gay men are beautiful and every one of them finds love and support.  In Tennessee.Our old friend from the Ellery Mountain series, Dr. Liam, is still on his own, in spite of all his gorgeous friends who have found eternal love on the banks of the River Black.  Enter bad boy Mitchell Askett, whose local gentry parents made good and moved their better-than-you asses to Knoxville when he was just a boy.  Mitchell is, as my daughter would say, a hot mess. He's hot, but he's a mess. And no sooner does he pull into town with his niece Roberta, than she gets sick and is rushed to the hospital.  Where Liam saves the day. Aw.I have to admit, RJ Scott does a fine job of making these stories believable, but why she picked a notoriously un-gay-friendly state to set her romances in, I'm not sure.  Of course, she's a Brit, and the British English all these Tennessee country boys use also makes me giggle.Given the novella format Scott uses for this extended series, she manages to very skillfully pack in a wonderful amount of character detail about the main characters - not so much about the rest of the cast, about whom we've learned in previous books.  It is a slightly frustrating formula, because her characters are so likable that you really want to spend more time with them.  I particularly liked the density of this story - the amount of small-town action, and the resolution at the end.I have it in my head that someday RJ is going to write a massive War-and-Peace scale novel about Ellery rising up as a town to defeat the homophobes who run the Tennessee state government.  Then, at last, we'd get to see every one of these appealing, attractive characters working as a team to change the larger world.  But that's my fantasy.  Meanwhile, enjoy the romance, because no one does it better.