A Fairy Tale Christmas by Leigh Greenwood Set in 1880, spinster Nan is the owner of a nice farm in the Shenandoah Valley. Just a few days before Christmas, businessman Will Atkins and his daughter Clara wind up on her doorstep when Will falls sick and there’s nobody else available to take him in. On his way to leave Clara with her maternal grandparents because he’s unable to look after her, Nan could be the answer to this lonely pair’s prayers. Two things struck me about this

Linda Broday doesn’t shy away from the dark side of the Old West. Yes, the central characters in her stories always manage to save each other in the nick of time and find their happily ever afters, but there’s plenty of gritty realism thrown in along with the sappy sweetness of romance. In Saving the Mail Order Bride, for example, Jack and Nora end up with a baby girl after the child’s mother dies in childbirth and the father perishes in a simple accident. It’s a sobering rem

Widowed after a short and somewhat disastrous marriage, Olivia is determined to start a new life with her brother in San Francisco. The only problem is that San Francisco in the middle of the 1840s gold rush is a dirty, lawless shanty town and no place at all for a good and Godly woman. It should be noted going in that Barbour Press is a specifically Christian publisher, and the degree of evangelical fervor does vary between books. I'd put this one at the more fervent end of

I had a bit of a wince early on in the story when an aristocratic lord in 1870’s London criticised his younger brother for ‘hanging out with’ an actress, and wondered if the whole story was going to be full of such contemporary slang. I’m glad I stuck with it, though, because the rest of the book does feel solidly period, bringing the Wild West vividly to life through the lens of Lady Elizabeth, who chooses to make a new life in America out from under the thumb of her control

Set amid the fervor of California’s Gold Rush, the Lucky Creek Lady is Laurie Sinclair, whose father left a comfortable life in Philadelphia to chase dreams of gold. When her entomologist fiance goes on yet another expedition instead of setting a wedding date, Laurie sets of the visit her family in Lucky Creek, and at first she can’t wait to go home. Far from the civilized world she knows, Lucky Creek is a rough frontier town populated with rougher characters, like Darcy the

This is an incredibly strong romance between two flawed, real and utterly delightful characters. Better yet, it’s got that one thing which can be ridiculously elusive in historical romances; it’s got diversity. Ursula, the heroine, is Jewish, full-figured, and definitely on the autism spectrum. In 1848 Philadelphia society, however, she comes across as unbearably brash and friendless except for Hugo, an awkward, bookish type she hopes to marry purely to avoid ending up alone.

I was about a quarter of the way into The Gentleman Smuggler’s Lady, the first in this three-book collection, when I started getting an unsettling feeling of deja vu. A few more pages and I was sure I’d read the book before, though it took a close look at my Goodreads library before I figured out where. It was part of a box set called The Regency Brides Collection, published in 2017. Obviously a limited time run, that set is no longer available and the author has bundled this

Clay Colby’s an outlaw trying to go straight. Working with other men to build a new town called Devil’s Crossing, he longs for a partner in life. His friend Luke runs a rather unusual mail-order bride service, finding brides for men who can’t advertise through normal channels, and through Luke Clay finds Tally. Betrayed by her stepmother, she was placed in a lunatic asylum and horribly maltreated before being able to escape, taking with her several other women and Violet, a b

This is a collection of stories from Christian publisher Barbour Press all themed around runaway brides and set in America in the latter half of the 19th century. From a wealthy socialite getting cold feet about her arranged dynastic marriage to a mail-order bride choosing to marry a stranger rather than a man she knows for certain to be unpleasant, this is a pleasantly varied collection, and when I say pleasantly varied, I was surprised and delighted to find one of the stori

A sweet romance set in a small Texas town in the 1880s, Cowboy Charm School begins with Texas Ranger Brett Tucker racing into a church to stop the wedding of wanted outlaw Frank Foster. Problem is, it’s the wrong Frank Foster… and things don’t improve much for Tucker as he does his best to repair the damage done, trying to get Frank back together with his outraged would-be bride, Kate. It’s a hilarious and at times poignant comedy of errors as candy-maker Kate has to step bac

The eight stories in this collection were very varied in quality, so I’ll give each a very brief review and individual rating as well as an overall rating for the collection. Shenandoah Hearts by Carrie Fancett Pagels This is one of the weakest stories in the collection. Way too many characters with several side romances going on, it reads like the un-fleshed-out outline for a series. All the bits of the actual romance were ‘told’ rather than shown. Two stars. Heart of Nantah