What do you think?
Rate this book
Escape to Koolonga
Emmie Montfort had always been the quiet, plain Jane among her beautiful and talented family -- and it was partly to escape from it all that she had come here to Koolonga to take over her inheritance of a small general store....
But when she had decided to get away from Sydney she hadn't known just what to expect in Koolonga...
But when she had decided to get away from Sydney she hadn't known just what to expect in Koolonga...
- GenresHqnHarlequin Romance
192 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1972
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 12, 2022
“Escape to Koolanga” is the story of Emmie and Ridd.
Our heroine is the plain Jane of her family, who is treated like a servant since her parents died by all four of her snobby siblings. When their old housekeeper dies, leaving her in charge of her three foster kids and old shop, Emmie decides to take a chance.
Migrating to the remote village of Koolanga, she meets the grumpy neighbor Ridd, the three sweet children, a school teacher and a helpful friend. There’s a double jealousy situation going on, however the bond with the children is super heartwarming and the apricot scene made me tear up.
Enjoyable read, I rooted for the heroine.
Safe
4.25/5
Our heroine is the plain Jane of her family, who is treated like a servant since her parents died by all four of her snobby siblings. When their old housekeeper dies, leaving her in charge of her three foster kids and old shop, Emmie decides to take a chance.
Migrating to the remote village of Koolanga, she meets the grumpy neighbor Ridd, the three sweet children, a school teacher and a helpful friend. There’s a double jealousy situation going on, however the bond with the children is super heartwarming and the apricot scene made me tear up.
Enjoyable read, I rooted for the heroine.
Safe
4.25/5
February 2, 2017
3.5 stars rounded up. This was really sweet. The opening reminded me a bit of L.M. Montgomery's The Blue Castle with the "plain Jane" doormatty heroine finally kicking over the traces and asserting herself. The heroine is one of five in a family of attractive achievers. She was the one who stayed home with the aging parents and then helped with her sibling's children. Now, their former governess has left her a general store and a foster family of three children in her will. The heroine is determined to change her life and take care of those children.
So - she escapes to Koolonga - in the heart of the Outback. The store is rundown. The local station owner (H) tries to talk her out of her plans. But our heroine buys a bell for the front door and an apricot tree for the garden and sets to work. She and the children get along marvelously and the narrative covers six months or so of this happy time.
There's an Vietnam vet OM (No name was mentioned but that would fit the timeline) who is pining for the OW, a schoolteacher who married someone else while he was deployed. She's now a widow and hanging around the H. The heroine spends a lot of time trying to get them back together, but the H doesn't know that. He thinks the h is escaping a love interest from Sydney and is just using the OM as a rebound thing.
The H tries to come off as a tough alpha, but he quietly makes the h's life a lot easier. But then he snaps after seeing the OM kiss the h(out of gratitude for helping him get back together with his OW). The H brutally kisses the h and halfway through realizes she has had no experience and is terrified. He apologizes immediately and feels really bad about it.
It's only after the h is deathly ill with pneumonia does the H declare himself in a really sweet scene around the dead-from-sheep-eating-it apricot tree.
Give this one a try if you're looking for a sweet heroine with a strong will and a hero who is smitten almost from the beginning.
Outback checklist:
One community dance.
One truck breaking down incident
No one is lost in the bush, but the heroine is soaked in a rainstorm looking for one of the children.
Only a few lines of poetry about the Outback quoted by the OM
So - she escapes to Koolonga - in the heart of the Outback. The store is rundown. The local station owner (H) tries to talk her out of her plans. But our heroine buys a bell for the front door and an apricot tree for the garden and sets to work. She and the children get along marvelously and the narrative covers six months or so of this happy time.
There's an Vietnam vet OM (No name was mentioned but that would fit the timeline) who is pining for the OW, a schoolteacher who married someone else while he was deployed. She's now a widow and hanging around the H. The heroine spends a lot of time trying to get them back together, but the H doesn't know that. He thinks the h is escaping a love interest from Sydney and is just using the OM as a rebound thing.
The H tries to come off as a tough alpha, but he quietly makes the h's life a lot easier. But then he snaps after seeing the OM kiss the h(out of gratitude for helping him get back together with his OW). The H brutally kisses the h and halfway through realizes she has had no experience and is terrified. He apologizes immediately and feels really bad about it.
It's only after the h is deathly ill with pneumonia does the H declare himself in a really sweet scene around the dead-from-sheep-eating-it apricot tree.
Give this one a try if you're looking for a sweet heroine with a strong will and a hero who is smitten almost from the beginning.
Outback checklist:
One community dance.
One truck breaking down incident
No one is lost in the bush, but the heroine is soaked in a rainstorm looking for one of the children.
Only a few lines of poetry about the Outback quoted by the OM
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2018
I think that to appreciate the h in this book you really need to read between the lines. She's been the victim of her charismatic family, who really treat her like a drudge and have done everything possible to exploit her natural shyness and sweet nature. The author makes this part clear, but what I think is that the h is actually psychologically damaged from the experience, and it's going to take some time for her to get better. It almost helps to think of her as someone who has been kept in captivity for years and released into the world with very few skills and only limited expectations. When you think of it that way, her very simple, almost pathetic goals are quite touching.
She meets the H, who is bossy and domineering, and she fights that, even as she actually does need help because she's in a difficult situation and because she is so incredibly naive. She sets about creating a life for herself, and it's strangely poignant to me when she observes that her new friend, the local schoolteacher is much more of a sister than either of hers. The H misreads her, but is ultimately enchanted by her vulnerability and petite helplessness. He's a pretty decent, if arrogant guy, and he adores her and she loves him, so HEA. He also promises to protect her from her predatory family, which it sounds like she desperately needs. Presumably she'll continue to evolve after the HEA.
She meets the H, who is bossy and domineering, and she fights that, even as she actually does need help because she's in a difficult situation and because she is so incredibly naive. She sets about creating a life for herself, and it's strangely poignant to me when she observes that her new friend, the local schoolteacher is much more of a sister than either of hers. The H misreads her, but is ultimately enchanted by her vulnerability and petite helplessness. He's a pretty decent, if arrogant guy, and he adores her and she loves him, so HEA. He also promises to protect her from her predatory family, which it sounds like she desperately needs. Presumably she'll continue to evolve after the HEA.
August 11, 2023
Still 3.5 stars
_______________________________
This was the first book from this author that I have read. I had trouble in the beginning. Things moved very slowly with a lot of internal musings that is just not my style. However, once things got rolling, they really rolled and I found myself enjoying it a lot!
More like 3.5 stars only because of the slow start
_______________________________
This was the first book from this author that I have read. I had trouble in the beginning. Things moved very slowly with a lot of internal musings that is just not my style. However, once things got rolling, they really rolled and I found myself enjoying it a lot!
More like 3.5 stars only because of the slow start
July 31, 2022
cw: abusive family members, exoticism
A vintage Harlequin that hit the spot! And this one took place in the Australian Outback! The heroine is the black sheep of her family but finds out an elderly distant family member left her a house after they passed away. There, she enjoys more freedom and develops friendships. One of the man she meets, is our hero. Whom she is put off slightly by, but nonetheless drawn too. They had some great banter and moments. Which is why I definitely rooted for them.
A vintage Harlequin that hit the spot! And this one took place in the Australian Outback! The heroine is the black sheep of her family but finds out an elderly distant family member left her a house after they passed away. There, she enjoys more freedom and develops friendships. One of the man she meets, is our hero. Whom she is put off slightly by, but nonetheless drawn too. They had some great banter and moments. Which is why I definitely rooted for them.
July 11, 2017
This was a sweet read. I just wish there had been more facetime between the main couple. It felt like the h had more interactions with the secondary characters.
August 3, 2022
very slow start, extremely slow, but sweet vintage romance
August 17, 2026
4 stars
I really enjoyed Escape to Koolonga. It is a sweet, innocent and satisfying vintage romance with a constant thread of romantic tension running underneath the story. Ridley frequently seems angry with Emily and misunderstands her motives, while Emily gradually gets the opportunity to prove that she genuinely is exactly the person she claims to be: hardworking, caring and determined to make a success of her new life. That misunderstood-heroine/proving-herself trope worked particularly well for me.
The book also does an excellent job of quietly showing us Ridley's feelings even though the story is largely filtered through Emily's perspective. There are little flashes of jealousy, his constant awareness of her, and numerous things he does behind the scenes to make her life easier without taking any credit for them. Looking back, it is obvious that this man was devoted to her almost from the beginning, even while Emily remained convinced that he didn't particularly want her there.
Emily is 26 and has always been the ugly duckling of a large, accomplished family. Her two brothers and two sisters are beautiful, clever, successful and socially confident, while Emily is the quiet middle child who has always faded into the background. In another family she might have been considered sweet and pretty enough, but beside her dazzling siblings she has always been treated as the unimpressive one.
After their parents died, Emily effectively became the family homemaker. She looks after everyone else's children, gets meals onto the table and generally makes herself useful while her siblings take her completely for granted. They are comfortably well-off and could easily afford domestic help, but why bother when Emily is there to do everything?
I did find the opening rather frustrating because it went on and on about this magnificent family and their various accomplishments. In retrospect, however, I can see its purpose. We need to understand how thoroughly Emily has disappeared amongst these beautiful, bright, charming siblings before we can appreciate what it means for her finally to build a life in which she matters.
Her opportunity arrives when she inherits a tiny rural store and responsibility for three foster children from an elderly woman who had once been the family's governess and had evidently retained a particular affection for the quiet, overlooked middle child.
Emily seizes upon the inheritance as her chance to escape. She has a rather romantic vision of a charming little shop in an equally charming country town surrounded by a lush green valley. She will make the business successful, raise the children and finally have a home and purpose of her own.
Her siblings are predictably upset that their convenient unpaid homemaker is abandoning them, but Emily goes anyway.
Unfortunately, she has done almost no research.
When she arrives in Koolonga, she discovers that there essentially isn't a town. The store sits in the middle of nowhere and has been closed for months because its previous owner died some time before her will was finally located. It is grimy, empty, antiquated and thoroughly neglected. The two large ranches whose custom once made the business viable have naturally taken their trade elsewhere, meaning Emily has inherited a store without customers.
She even burns her hand trying to get the heater working.
Into this disaster strides Ridley—or Ridd—a large, aggressive, domineering man who initially looks like some rough ranch worker because he has been working all day. In reality, he is the dominant figure in the district, owner of a huge neighbouring ranch and very much the local lord and master.
He takes one look at Emily and immediately recognises how hopelessly unprepared she is.
Ridd is impatient and commanding, clearly regarding her as a naive young woman who has no conception of what she has taken on. When Emily becomes faint with exhaustion, he more or less orders her home with him, where his housekeeper feeds and looks after her.
And there is a tiny moment here that I absolutely loved.
Rid makes Emily put her head between her knees when she is close to fainting, and while she is too out of it to notice properly, he cannot resist gently brushing his fingers against the nape of her neck.
It is such a small thing, but it immediately tells us something that Emily herself doesn't understand: this man is already affected by her.
That subtlety is one of the strongest things about the book. Because we don't have access to Rid's thoughts, the author gives us these little involuntary gestures and behavioural clues instead. I love when an author can make us realise that the apparently controlled hero's emotional world is quietly falling apart without simply telling us that he has fallen in love.
SPOILERS
Practically speaking, Emily cannot make a success of Koolonga without Ridd. The store needs the custom of his ranch if it is going to survive, and she also needs his cooperation if she is going to establish herself sufficiently to have the three foster children returned to her care.
Ridd seems reluctant to facilitate any of this because he genuinely doubts that Emily can cope with the life she has chosen.
Yet he helps her anyway.
That creates an interesting tension between them. Emily resents knowing that her independence effectively exists at Rid's pleasure. He has the economic and social power to make her new life viable, while she believes that he doesn't particularly respect her or even care for her as a person.
Meanwhile, Emily quietly gets on with proving herself.
This was probably my favourite element of the story. Rather than simply being told that Emily is a wonderful person whom Rid inexplicably falls in love with, we get to watch her create a life for herself. She works hard at the store, refuses to give up when things are difficult, takes her responsibilities towards the three children seriously and gradually demonstrates that beneath the rather naive woman who arrived with romantic fantasies about country life is someone genuinely capable and determined.
It gives Rid something real to discover about her.
There is also a moderate amount of other-woman and other-man drama. Rid spends considerable time with a beautiful widow whom Emily naturally assumes is his romantic interest, while Emily develops a warm friendship with one of the men who works for Rid.
I particularly liked the handling of the other man because Emily is never genuinely romantically interested in him. I don't generally enjoy a heroine seriously considering another man when she is already emotionally invested in the hero. Here, her feelings are purely friendly—but Rid doesn't know that.
His jealousy therefore becomes another lovely clue to what is happening beneath his apparently hard exterior.
The twist is that the supposed other man and other woman are actually secretly in love with each other, and Emily eventually finds herself matchmaking between them. I thought that was rather sweet, and it also demonstrated her emotional maturity.
Emily herself was a heroine I liked. She is naive in some respects, but importantly she is 26 rather than some extremely young girl-child, and she is trying to take responsibility for her own future. Her siblings have conditioned her to underestimate herself, but once she gets away from them, we gradually see that she is perfectly capable of creating a meaningful life.
Rid is also an unusually well-rounded example of the dominant vintage-romance hero. He has all the hardness I enjoy: he is commanding, successful, physically capable, accustomed to being obeyed and completely at home in his environment.
But his softer qualities are equally convincing.
His kindness isn't reserved exclusively for Emily so that the author can persuade us he's secretly a nice man. He has an established role within his community and genuinely takes responsibility for the people around him. They respect him because he has earned that respect. It makes his protectiveness towards Emily feel like an extension of an already established character rather than a personality transplant caused by falling in love.
And yet Emily clearly becomes special to him.
Rid finds excuses to spend time with her. He quietly intervenes to make her life easier. He watches her. He worries about her. He becomes jealous of her friendship with another man. And again and again there are those small hints that he is far more emotionally invested than Emily understands.
Meanwhile, Emily keeps resisting her own growing feelings because she remains convinced that the beautiful widow is the woman Rid really wants.
The climax comes when Emily becomes ill and Rid discovers her in a vulnerable state and takes care of her. Eventually, when she reaches a low point and begins crying, he simply cannot bear it anymore and finally tells her how he feels.
I really enjoyed the declaration. It is sweet and heartfelt, and suddenly all those little things Rid has been doing throughout the book fall into place. We understand how long he has wanted Emily, how much he has quietly done for her, and that underneath his anger and autocratic behaviour there has been a man increasingly besotted with a woman who had no idea how important she had become to him.
I could perhaps have used a little more vulnerability from Rid in that final scene. There are hints that he is frightened he has mishandled everything and may have waited too long, and I would have loved the author to push that fear of loss slightly harder. A little more raw emotion from him would have made an already satisfying declaration even better.
But that is a relatively minor complaint.
Overall, Escape to Koolonga was a beautifully handled little vintage romance. It gave me a heroine who genuinely proves herself through her actions, a dominant hero who misunderstands her but slowly learns her true character, some enjoyable jealousy, a moderate amount of other-woman drama, and—best of all—plenty of subtle evidence that the supposedly hard, irritated hero has actually been going quietly mad over the heroine almost from the moment she arrived.
4 stars. Amanda Doyle's writing felt assured and emotionally intelligent, particularly in the way she conveyed Rid's hidden feelings through small actions rather than heavy-handed explanations. She felt like a safe pair of hands, and I would happily read more of her books.
I really enjoyed Escape to Koolonga. It is a sweet, innocent and satisfying vintage romance with a constant thread of romantic tension running underneath the story. Ridley frequently seems angry with Emily and misunderstands her motives, while Emily gradually gets the opportunity to prove that she genuinely is exactly the person she claims to be: hardworking, caring and determined to make a success of her new life. That misunderstood-heroine/proving-herself trope worked particularly well for me.
The book also does an excellent job of quietly showing us Ridley's feelings even though the story is largely filtered through Emily's perspective. There are little flashes of jealousy, his constant awareness of her, and numerous things he does behind the scenes to make her life easier without taking any credit for them. Looking back, it is obvious that this man was devoted to her almost from the beginning, even while Emily remained convinced that he didn't particularly want her there.
Emily is 26 and has always been the ugly duckling of a large, accomplished family. Her two brothers and two sisters are beautiful, clever, successful and socially confident, while Emily is the quiet middle child who has always faded into the background. In another family she might have been considered sweet and pretty enough, but beside her dazzling siblings she has always been treated as the unimpressive one.
After their parents died, Emily effectively became the family homemaker. She looks after everyone else's children, gets meals onto the table and generally makes herself useful while her siblings take her completely for granted. They are comfortably well-off and could easily afford domestic help, but why bother when Emily is there to do everything?
I did find the opening rather frustrating because it went on and on about this magnificent family and their various accomplishments. In retrospect, however, I can see its purpose. We need to understand how thoroughly Emily has disappeared amongst these beautiful, bright, charming siblings before we can appreciate what it means for her finally to build a life in which she matters.
Her opportunity arrives when she inherits a tiny rural store and responsibility for three foster children from an elderly woman who had once been the family's governess and had evidently retained a particular affection for the quiet, overlooked middle child.
Emily seizes upon the inheritance as her chance to escape. She has a rather romantic vision of a charming little shop in an equally charming country town surrounded by a lush green valley. She will make the business successful, raise the children and finally have a home and purpose of her own.
Her siblings are predictably upset that their convenient unpaid homemaker is abandoning them, but Emily goes anyway.
Unfortunately, she has done almost no research.
When she arrives in Koolonga, she discovers that there essentially isn't a town. The store sits in the middle of nowhere and has been closed for months because its previous owner died some time before her will was finally located. It is grimy, empty, antiquated and thoroughly neglected. The two large ranches whose custom once made the business viable have naturally taken their trade elsewhere, meaning Emily has inherited a store without customers.
She even burns her hand trying to get the heater working.
Into this disaster strides Ridley—or Ridd—a large, aggressive, domineering man who initially looks like some rough ranch worker because he has been working all day. In reality, he is the dominant figure in the district, owner of a huge neighbouring ranch and very much the local lord and master.
He takes one look at Emily and immediately recognises how hopelessly unprepared she is.
Ridd is impatient and commanding, clearly regarding her as a naive young woman who has no conception of what she has taken on. When Emily becomes faint with exhaustion, he more or less orders her home with him, where his housekeeper feeds and looks after her.
And there is a tiny moment here that I absolutely loved.
Rid makes Emily put her head between her knees when she is close to fainting, and while she is too out of it to notice properly, he cannot resist gently brushing his fingers against the nape of her neck.
It is such a small thing, but it immediately tells us something that Emily herself doesn't understand: this man is already affected by her.
That subtlety is one of the strongest things about the book. Because we don't have access to Rid's thoughts, the author gives us these little involuntary gestures and behavioural clues instead. I love when an author can make us realise that the apparently controlled hero's emotional world is quietly falling apart without simply telling us that he has fallen in love.
SPOILERS
Practically speaking, Emily cannot make a success of Koolonga without Ridd. The store needs the custom of his ranch if it is going to survive, and she also needs his cooperation if she is going to establish herself sufficiently to have the three foster children returned to her care.
Ridd seems reluctant to facilitate any of this because he genuinely doubts that Emily can cope with the life she has chosen.
Yet he helps her anyway.
That creates an interesting tension between them. Emily resents knowing that her independence effectively exists at Rid's pleasure. He has the economic and social power to make her new life viable, while she believes that he doesn't particularly respect her or even care for her as a person.
Meanwhile, Emily quietly gets on with proving herself.
This was probably my favourite element of the story. Rather than simply being told that Emily is a wonderful person whom Rid inexplicably falls in love with, we get to watch her create a life for herself. She works hard at the store, refuses to give up when things are difficult, takes her responsibilities towards the three children seriously and gradually demonstrates that beneath the rather naive woman who arrived with romantic fantasies about country life is someone genuinely capable and determined.
It gives Rid something real to discover about her.
There is also a moderate amount of other-woman and other-man drama. Rid spends considerable time with a beautiful widow whom Emily naturally assumes is his romantic interest, while Emily develops a warm friendship with one of the men who works for Rid.
I particularly liked the handling of the other man because Emily is never genuinely romantically interested in him. I don't generally enjoy a heroine seriously considering another man when she is already emotionally invested in the hero. Here, her feelings are purely friendly—but Rid doesn't know that.
His jealousy therefore becomes another lovely clue to what is happening beneath his apparently hard exterior.
The twist is that the supposed other man and other woman are actually secretly in love with each other, and Emily eventually finds herself matchmaking between them. I thought that was rather sweet, and it also demonstrated her emotional maturity.
Emily herself was a heroine I liked. She is naive in some respects, but importantly she is 26 rather than some extremely young girl-child, and she is trying to take responsibility for her own future. Her siblings have conditioned her to underestimate herself, but once she gets away from them, we gradually see that she is perfectly capable of creating a meaningful life.
Rid is also an unusually well-rounded example of the dominant vintage-romance hero. He has all the hardness I enjoy: he is commanding, successful, physically capable, accustomed to being obeyed and completely at home in his environment.
But his softer qualities are equally convincing.
His kindness isn't reserved exclusively for Emily so that the author can persuade us he's secretly a nice man. He has an established role within his community and genuinely takes responsibility for the people around him. They respect him because he has earned that respect. It makes his protectiveness towards Emily feel like an extension of an already established character rather than a personality transplant caused by falling in love.
And yet Emily clearly becomes special to him.
Rid finds excuses to spend time with her. He quietly intervenes to make her life easier. He watches her. He worries about her. He becomes jealous of her friendship with another man. And again and again there are those small hints that he is far more emotionally invested than Emily understands.
Meanwhile, Emily keeps resisting her own growing feelings because she remains convinced that the beautiful widow is the woman Rid really wants.
The climax comes when Emily becomes ill and Rid discovers her in a vulnerable state and takes care of her. Eventually, when she reaches a low point and begins crying, he simply cannot bear it anymore and finally tells her how he feels.
I really enjoyed the declaration. It is sweet and heartfelt, and suddenly all those little things Rid has been doing throughout the book fall into place. We understand how long he has wanted Emily, how much he has quietly done for her, and that underneath his anger and autocratic behaviour there has been a man increasingly besotted with a woman who had no idea how important she had become to him.
I could perhaps have used a little more vulnerability from Rid in that final scene. There are hints that he is frightened he has mishandled everything and may have waited too long, and I would have loved the author to push that fear of loss slightly harder. A little more raw emotion from him would have made an already satisfying declaration even better.
But that is a relatively minor complaint.
Overall, Escape to Koolonga was a beautifully handled little vintage romance. It gave me a heroine who genuinely proves herself through her actions, a dominant hero who misunderstands her but slowly learns her true character, some enjoyable jealousy, a moderate amount of other-woman drama, and—best of all—plenty of subtle evidence that the supposedly hard, irritated hero has actually been going quietly mad over the heroine almost from the moment she arrived.
4 stars. Amanda Doyle's writing felt assured and emotionally intelligent, particularly in the way she conveyed Rid's hidden feelings through small actions rather than heavy-handed explanations. She felt like a safe pair of hands, and I would happily read more of her books.
October 3, 2014
It is an angst free book. If you are a fan of Betty Neel's typical female lead character, this book is for you.
January 3, 2026
9/10 really enjoyed this book. I didn't think it started slow. The beginning of the story vividly painted the heroine's vulnerability and the way her glamorous family used her. Doyle's use of an apricot tree as an extension of the heroine, was clever and angsty. The hero was kind under his tough exterior, as with all Doyle's heros. As I'm beginning to find with her books, the proposal scene is a bit of a letdown. Compared to how thoroughly the heroine's thoughts are detailed elsewhere, they are almost sketchy when it comes to this should-be highlight scene. However the rest of the story is excellent and kept me out of bed when I should have been sleeping.
May 14, 2024
Nice romance with 26 year old plain jane in a family of beauties, who finds freedom in the outback and a handsome sheep farmer. She's a lovely heroine and he's big and protective. Starts slow, but worth progressing.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews