Mountain Manhattan, Frankie Love

Stifled by concrete and metal, wishing for open air, trees, and isolation, Ford Thatcher is in a situation of his own making.  Commissioned to create an art installation in Central Park he's in a chaotic city with no clue how to fill the brief and keep his sanity.  Until he sees the green of his beloved forest in the eyes of the woman staring at him from across the check-in counter.  Mia has no room in her life for romance or a fling but Ford makes her resistance futile.  Both know something permanent isn't in the cards but their hearts don't care.  It'll take a lot of humility and courage to move beyond what they know to reach for what they deserve.

Mia is slowly being buried under the weight of all her responsibility.  I admire her strength, love, and commitment to her family.  She's doing a great job but the stress gets to her and causes her to become rather emotionally unstable at times.  Totally understandable, of course.  The way she is when she first meets Ford gives us a glimpse of who she is inside, the part of her that's stifled by life's circumstances.  She's strong, sassy, fun, funny, and confident.  But when the light of day reveals everything on her plate, it's not as shiny as it was before.  Ford is still mesmerized, awed even, at the amount of fortitude she has within her.  As the story progresses I find that her character weakens under the strain of adding romantic love to the mix.  Instead of using it as a strength, her immaturity due to her age becomes apparent and it takes Ford's tenacity and determination to remind her of the woman she could become.

Ford is intrigued from the get-go and it's no surprise why.  While I found him arrogant and condescending in the beginning, it didn't take long for me to see the reality of who he is inside.  His insides match Mia's quite well.  Through his interactions with her he becomes reacquainted with his softer, tender side.  The side that's been buried and smashed into submission by a staunch resolution to ignore it.  His past dictates his actions with Mia and they're as annoying as they are understandable.  It takes him a long time to truly open up to Mia.  I'm not really a fan of how often he belittles their connection, Mia as a woman after he thinks his emotional revelations are being rejected, and the city he won't bring himself to understand except through Mia.  I didn't appreciate his description of what they were doing as a way to tap into his muse and felt that wasn't given enough of a dismissal or acknowledgement of fallacy when his real feelings were made known.  He was tender and then he'd get all butt-hurt and react poorly.  Once I can understand, but two or three times?  Not awesome.  He does overcome that, though, and redeems himself in a big way with his grand gesture.

The proposal was pretty over the top, a bit cheesy, and a little unrealistic, but despite all that it was still romantic and heartfelt.  It was, at its most basic parts, what Mia needed to both see and hear to convince her that life with Ford is where she's meant to be, no matter where that is.  Their individual growth was the most important here and they didn't achieve it on their own.  Only through the strength of the other person were they able to see what was missing and acknowledge what they needed to become the person they'd always wanted to be.  The ending was sweet, tender, humorous, and triumphant for all of them.  Mountain Manhattan was a mostly well-rounded story with difficult pasts and emotional blindness surrounded by a heaping amount of sexual chemistry and a happy ending.

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