12 years ago
Showing posts with label mail order bride. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mail order bride. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
Review: "A Love Most Worthy" by Sandra Ardoin
Saturday, July 18, 2015
"a bride at last" by melissa jagears
Abandoned by his mail-order bride, Silas Jonesey has fought an uphill battle to recover from a pattern of poor choices. Now his prayers for reconciliation have finally come true and his estranged wife has contacted him with her whereabouts.
Kate Dawson was supposed to be a mail-order bride, but upon realizing she'd been deceived about her intended groom, she's now settled into life as a schoolteacher. When the mother of a student passes away, Kate assumes she'll take on care of nine-year-old Anthony-until two men suddenly show up in town, claiming to be the boy's father.
Silas can see Anthony loves Kate, so he enlists her help in reaching out to the boy and attempting to prove his paternity to the court. When a common interest in Anthony leads to an interest in each other and Silas and Kate begin to think they can overcome their rocky start, neither is prepared for the secrets and past hurts that have yet to come to light. Can Silas, Kate, and Anthony's wounded souls bind them together or will all that stands between them leave them lonely forever?
A Bride at Last is the third novel in Melissa Jagears' Unexpected Bride series, which takes the mail order bride trope and turns it on its head. In A Bride at Last, Silas had a mail order bride who ran away, and Kate planned to be a mail order bride until her intended turned out to be the town drunk. Both moved on from their pasts, but those pasts come back to haunt them when they're thrown together in a quest to help Kate's student Anthony—who just might also be Silas's son.
Overall, I really enjoyed A Bride at Last. Kate and Silas are both likeable characters, and I wanted them to be together. I did feel like Silas's reaction to Kate's past was a bit too extreme—or perhaps just too drawn out. That said, I loved the way Jagears brought about their reconciliation.
If the novel had been about 50 pages shorter with the time that Kate and Silas spent apart in Silas's hometown Salt Flatts greatly reduced, the novel would have been just about perfect. As it is, it's still a very solid historical romance. 4 stars.
See what others are saying.
Buy the book.
Read my review of Jagears' A Bride in Store (4 stars).
Melissa Jagears, an ESL teacher by trade and the author of A Bride for Keeps and A Bride in Store, is a stay-at-home mother on a tiny Kansas farm with a fixer-upper house. She's a member of ACFW and CROWN fiction marketing, and her passion is to help Christian believers mature in their faith and judge rightly.
Find Melissa online: website, Facebook
Can Silas and Kate overcome their rocky start and experience healing—and possibly love? Discover the answer in Melissa Jagears' new book, A Bride at Last. Neither Kate nor Silas is prepared for the secrets and past hurts that have yet to come to light as they attempt to prove nine-year-old Anthony's paternity to the court. Can their wounded souls bind them together or will all that stands between them leave them lonely forever?
Overall, I really enjoyed A Bride at Last. Kate and Silas are both likeable characters, and I wanted them to be together. I did feel like Silas's reaction to Kate's past was a bit too extreme—or perhaps just too drawn out. That said, I loved the way Jagears brought about their reconciliation.
If the novel had been about 50 pages shorter with the time that Kate and Silas spent apart in Silas's hometown Salt Flatts greatly reduced, the novel would have been just about perfect. As it is, it's still a very solid historical romance. 4 stars.
See what others are saying.
Buy the book.
Read my review of Jagears' A Bride in Store (4 stars).
Find Melissa online: website, Facebook
Celebrate the release of A Bride at Last by entering to win a $100 Memory-Making giveaway and RSVPing to Melissa's August 4th author chat party!
One grand prize winner will receive:
- A $100 gift card to Netflix (for a family movie night), Shutterfly (to create a family memory book), or TablePlayGames (for a family game night)
- One copy of A Bride at Last
RSVP today and spread the word—tell your friends about the giveaway via FACEBOOK, TWITTER, or PINTEREST and increase your chances of winning. Hope to see you on the 4th!
Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from Litfuse Publicity Group. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own. Also, some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase an item, I will receive an affiliate commission. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission's 16 CFR, Part 255: "Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising."
Monday, September 29, 2014
"a bride in store" by melissa jagears
Impatient to meet her intended groom and help him grow his general store, mail-order bride Eliza Cantrell sets out on her travels a week early. But her plan goes sadly awry when her train is held up by robbers who steal her dowry and Axel, her groom-to-be, isn't even in town when she finally arrives.
Axel's business partner, William Stanton, has no head for business and would much rather be a doctor. When his friend's mail-order bride arrives in town with no money and no groom in sight, he feels responsible and lets her help around the store--where she quickly proves she's much more adept at business than he ever will be.
The sparks that fly between Will and Eliza as they work together in close quarters are hard to ignore, but Eliza is meant for Axel and a future with the store, while Will is biding his time until he can afford medical school. However, their troubles are far from over when Axel finally returns, and soon both Will and Eliza must decide what they're willing to sacrifice to chase their dreams—or if God has a new dream in store for them both.
It's no secret that I love marriage of convenience stories. Most mail order bride plot lines fall into that category, so that's what I was expecting when I picked up A Bride in Store. (Obviously, I didn't read the description too carefully!) However, this novel—about a woman who finds herself falling in love with the best friend of her intended groom—is perhaps even more satisfying that a traditional mail order bride story because of the additional layers of guilt and questioning the woman faces. I also love that Eliza isn't your typical romantic heroine. She's not a classic beauty—or even a beauty at all—but she becomes beautiful to those who get to know her.
Will and Eliza are both great characters who are a bit too stubborn for their own good! And that leads to really my only complaint with the novel—Will and Eliza's stubbornness results in a failure to communicate that is basically the driving force of the middle third of the novel, and I felt like that part drug on about 50 pages too long. But overall, A Bride in Store is a great look at both small-town Kansas and some very endearing characters. This is the second book in Melissa Jagears' Unexpected Brides series (there's also a novella), but it stands alone. However, the couples from both book one and the novella appear in this book, and I definitely want to go back and read their stories now! 4 stars.
Buy the book.
Get Jagears' Unexpected Brides novella, Love by the Letter
, free for Kindle!
Melissa Jagears, an ESL teacher by trade, is a stay-at-home mother on a tiny Kansas farm with a fixer-upper house. She's a member of ACFW and CROWN fiction marketing, and her passion is to help Christian believers mature in their faith and judge rightly. Find her online at www.melissajagears.com.
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