A Bride in Store - Melissa Jagears - 4 stars

I received this book in exchange for an honest review from Bethany House Publishers. I was not too sure about this one since it is a Historical Romance. I don't do well with either of those genres. And it was book 2 in a series of books called Unexpected Brides. I have not read the first one. With this one I was pleasantly surprised. I really quite enjoyed it. It was very refreshing and also fluid and easy to read.

In this story We have Will who convinced his long time friend Axel, to order a mail order bride. Apparently this was common on the 1800's. Eliza, the 'mail order bride' decided to show up early to marry her new fiancé with hopes of helping to run his store and be part owner, a lifetime dream of hers. Only problem is the train she was on was robbed and she was hurt which led her to Will so he could patch her up. In the meantime, penniless and scarred, she discovers that Axel is away on business. During his absence she decides to help Will out with the store after discovering that he was part owner of the store. Both Will and Eliza begin to have feelings from one another and the story goes on from there.

I think the story was constructed beautifully. I really liked the great imagery, and found I could really immerse myself into the story, visualize it and get a real feel for this era. I loved the frontier/western feel. It also has great premise and has an amazing cast of characters that I found easy to connect with. The story flowed very well I think and at no point was confusing or hard to follow.

I really loved Will the most I think, he was a great character with a lot of personality. I loved watching him grow into a different person as the story went along. He never felt like he was worth much and even though people would tell him he was, he rarely believed it until he met Eliza. Eliza was a different kind of woman for that time. She great aspirations to be someone big in business and own her own store, but she also was kind of hard on herself. She to learn that life was not always about making the money but also about learning to care and understand unconditionally.

Overall, it was a fun, quick read and I would definitely pick up other books by this author and others in this series. I would recommend this book to anyone who likes a bit of history and romance without all the 'sexy times' in it.