Prairie bride [Paperback]

Debut author Julianne MacLean has penned a warm, emotional tale about a mail order bride with a dark secret and the gruff, rugged pairie farmer who becomes her husband in name and eventually in heart. The frontier struggles of the hero and heroine are portrayed in breathtaking, sometimes heartbreaking, detail. "Prairie Bride" is a story of secrets, old wounds and the healing power of love. An engaging page-turner, warm as prairie sunshine!

Prairie Bride works in parts and in other sections it falls flat. Sarah McFarland responds to an advertisement from a man wanting a wife in Kansas. She sees this as a needed escape from her past with a lover that she fears.

Briggs is a handsome farmer who needs help on his Kansas spread. He has been rejected by a beautiful woman and really wants a plain Jane, instead he gets beautiful Sarah and he is dismayed. Their first night together is rife with problems as Sarah is not a virgin and does not reveal this to Brigg. He is instantly suspicious of her and lets it be known right up front that he does not trust her.

Sarah has so many secrets from her past. Who is her ex-love and why did she leave Boston? She knows that Brigg's heart was broken just months before. She has a shaky marriage.

These two never communicate well. I found Brigg's attitude toward Sarah at first too hostile. Sarah came across as a martyr at times and she lies to herself in this novel. She makes the mistake of believing lies of omission are not really untruths. I never became overly interested in the lead's romantic journey even when the lies caught up with Sarah. There's not a lot of passion between these two except when they are losing their tempers or trying to explain themselves out of predicaments.

What works well in this novel is not the romance so much as life on the prairie. I was genuinely interested in sod houses and dugouts, locusts and grasshopper infestations. Here, the author does an excellent job of painting a vivid picture of western life that does not involve the average shootouts and cattle rustling.

From the back cover:

The prairie was hard on a woman.

You had to be tough to survive here, and Briggs expected any wife of his to be as stalwart as he. The first woman he had trusted to do the job had failed. So what had made him think a stranger, especially a beautiful one, could ever help him salvage his dreams?

Sarah MacFarland's mail-order-bride marriage to Mr. Brigman was heaven-sent. She only hoped that the silent rancher was a honest as he appeared, for Sarah's unspoken past already held enough lies and scandal to last her a lifetime!

And my review:

This was Julianne Maclean's first book. She has since gone on to write full-length historicals, but if PRAIRIE BRIDE is any indication of her talent, I will be on the lookout for her other books.

So many Harlequin romances start to read the same after a while. And while there are a lot of the standard plot devices in this book (the big misunderstandings, the ex-lovers getting in the way, a scandal in the past, etc, etc), this author has enough talent to keep the story from getting stale along the way.

Maclean did a great job of the historical backdrop, as well. I got a good look at what Frontier life was like on the prairies, but I never felt like I was reading a textbook. She kept the historical background in the background--which is just as a should be. The historical details were woven in throughout the plot.

The characters were fairly well developed. Not quite as well as I might have liked, but I'm betting that this author can really shine in this area when she has enough room to work. I'm looking forward to trying one of her full-length novels, to see how her writing grew over the years. One great thing about these characters is that they were likeable. That's something that's becoming rarer and rarer in romance these days. Both Briggs and Sarah were basically good, decent, honorable people. They were flawed, but in human ways, not in unforgivable ways that would make them unlikeable. That's a delicate balance for an author to strike, so I applaud this author for a job well done.

My only real complaint with this book was that it wasn't long enough! I would have loved to see this book about another 100 pages, so that they author could have really developed the characters. As it was, I was left feeling as if I hadn't explored the depths of their personas, merely scratched the surface.

Not one for my keeper shelf, but certainly a worthy read, and an author that I will looking out for in the future. I recommend this to fans of this author (it's always interesting to read one of a writer's older books and marvel at how their talent has grown) and to readers of historical and/or western romance.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 11 reviews  4.2 out of 5 stars