Review: Nice Story, but a Little Flat
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 3, 2014
I'm a huge fan of historical western romance novels, especially ones about mail order brides.  So, I was very excited when I found this one on Amazon for free.  I quickly downloaded it and immediately began to read it.  Alas, after only a few pages I was like WT???The beginning of the story is long, drawn out, and flat.  It starts with the heroine, Cassie, and her family at home on their family farm.  Cassie's dad is tired of the harsh weathers and decides he wants to move the family to California.  The story then proceeds to follow the family on their journey out west.  At some point, the story's focus switches to the hero, Rance, where he discovers his parents dead, murdered by hostile Indians.  The story then flips back to Cassie and her family, and we read about the Indian attack on their wagon train; FYI the attack is glossed over, no details are given.Cassie is left as the only survivor and gets lost in the surrounding forest, where she is then "rescued" by a madman trapper.  At this point the story starts to come alive (finally) and gets better...but, not great.  Cassie and Rance don't actually meet until around the 40% mark of the book; actually I'm wrong they do meet before that, but the reader is not privy to that meeting.  Imagine my surprise when they meet without any fanfare and it's casually mentioned that the two have met before.  I actually flipped back through a few pages to see if I'd missed something...I hadn't.  The first meeting between the two is not included in the story.This is a mail order bride story so there are ads placed and letters written; it's definitely not the usual formula mail order bride romance, but I liked the uniqueness of it.  IMO, the romance between Cassie and Rance starts out blah, but then becomes sweet.  Cassie endures a lot of trauma and heartache before she finally gets her HEA, and there was one part of the story that made me cry; although honestly, I think I was more shocked than anything else.From a technical point of view, the book is quite well written, but it could do with a bit of editing.  There were a few issues that I noted as I read, mostly with missing words; although nothing too distracting.  Overall, I liked this story.  It held my interest and did elicit some emotion as evidenced by my crying.  Unfortunately, too much of the story felt like it was being told to me, rather than my experiencing it.Furthermore, although I liked the characters, I didn't really identify with them.  Bottom line, reading this book did not induce me to read any of the others in the series.  Moreover, it's not one that would come to mind when recommending a book to a friend.  But, as usual I am sure there are many out there who will enjoy this book and very much so, as evidenced by the 5 star review.  Happy Reading!