Review: A Love Story
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 03 1, 2014
Bartholomew and Ariah are too innocent people who meet at the train station in Portland in 1891. He is there to pick up his nephew's mail order bride and she is the bride. Ariah has come from Cincinnati to find love. Bartholomew has a seven year loveless marriage to a manipulative shrew. What transpires between the two main characters over the next 300 pages is a ride well worth catching. Their story is heartfelt and truthful for the setting. This is not 'Fifty Shades of Gray' in a earlier setting, but a more realistic glimpse at people of a time and place we don't see anymore.The setting is not so uncommon for the times, mail order brides in the West, especially at an off the map, remote place as a light house on the Oregon coast. They each come from different directions, but they both want to find love, they didn't know at first that love had found them.The back stories of Bartholomew and Ariah are complex and this is the core to keep you reading.Charlene Raddon is a masterful story teller. Her characters are flawed and complex. They each want more out of life than they've  been given. The late 1800s was a time where honor, integrity, and commitment were not just words, but ideals to live by.Each chapter has tension and conflict between the two main characters, but also between everyone else in the novel. Bartholomew and Ariah want to do the right thing, but the hazards which are placed in front of them makes their individual goals seemingly unattainable. Raddon weaves in plausible, realistic obstacles to make the setting and characters real.A great read, back to a time and place where people were not caught up in themselves, but where people wanted to live a life where they had integrity, honor, and commitment.The physical connections the characters experience is the best sex I've read in a long time. Natural, real emotion, and meaningful, I was caught up in the learning curve the innocent characters went through to master what two people should feel when love takes them past the edge.The best western romance I've read in years.