Review: Child rearing 101
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 30, 2012
Mail Order Madness (Brides of Beckham)is the third in the Brides of Beckham series. I read them somewhat out of order. However, this only compliments the series as I normally do not like to read "backwards". And I had read the second first, then the first and now the third.As with the second book,Mail Order Mama (Brides of Beckham), I enjoyed the culture clash somehow. Only this time it was not East versus West, shy versus boisterous but child rearing.Susan, the heroine, is desperate to leave her small family farm with her eleven younger siblings behind. For as long as she remembers, she is babysitting, cooking, sawing and cleaning. While she and her next three siblings were raised very strict and had felt switch when they misbehaved, she realizes that her parents were just simply tired after four kids and the seven that followed were allowed to run wild.David, the hero, grew up somewhat privileged and inherited the family ranch. His wife died after giving birth to twins. He has been a widower with 4 "hellion" boys for a year, unable to hold on to a nanny, when his younger brother tells him that he has sent for a mail order bride. His brother is rather independent and is saving up to buy his own ranch, not wanting to have the ranch the brother grew up, split in half. Therefore he had asked for a simply young woman who would help him save his funds towards that goal.Susan had deliberately picked Jess as her groom as he has no children. She loves children but has clear ideas on how to raise them and how she expects them to behave. Jess is a newspaper man (reporter) and is killed on assignment while Susan is on her way to Texas to marry. David, who had considered sending for a mail order bride himself, one who would not know how is boys were regarded in the community, offers for Susan himself.The rest of the books is about how Susan gets the boys to behave, leaving her methods - a good smack on the bottom - behind as per David's orders (and he is quite firm in those) and using ingenuity to outsmart the little boys and getting them to behave.There is not a whole lot of romance, kind of difficult with 4 kids under the age of 8 around at all times but the author does manage to show the growing awareness in David that Susan is what the children need even when at times he clueless undermines her.As I said in my review ofMail Order Mayhem (Brides of Beckham), I hope the author will write the story of Harriet Long, the owner of the match making agency the brides of Beckham use.  I believe, her story could be the most interesting one.