A Bride For Keeps {Review}

I really like sticking to authors that I know and enjoy because I'm never quite sure what to expect from a new one.  I recently read Melissa Jagears debut novel A Bride For Keeps, and boy, am I glad I found this new author!  I loved her book and had a hard time putting it down!

From the back cover:

Everett Cline will never humiliate himself by seeking a mail-order bride. Not again. He's already been jilted by three mail-order brides and figures a wife just isn't in his future. However, a well-meaning neighbor hasn't given up on seeing him settled, so she goes behind his back to bring yet another woman to town for him.

Julia Lockwood has never been anything more than a pretty pawn for her father or a business acquisition for her former fiance. A mail-order marriage in faraway Kansas is a last resort, but she'll do anything to leave her life in Massachusetts and the heartbreak she's experienced there.

Although Everett doesn't see how a beautiful, cultured woman like Julia could be happy sharing his simple life, he could really use a helpmate on his homestead. Determined to prove she's more than just a pretty face, Julia agrees to a marriage in name only. Faced with the harsh realities of life on the prairie and hesitant to explore the tentative feelings growing between them, can Everett and Julia ever let each other in long enough to fall in love? 

If this is Melissa Jagears's debut novel, I can't wait to see what else she writes!  Her characters and story were very well written.  I have often wondered who would ever be or ask for a mail order bride, but Everett and Julia's story makes it very easy to understand why someone would go to such lengths for a spouse.  It is also a great story of how some of those marriages could even end with true love.  I thought everything flowed together nicely and had a very sweet ending!

I received this book for free for review from Bethany House Publishers.

 

Blessings,