STORY: After three months in a mail-order marriage, Hannah Wentworth McMurtry is a widow—pregnant, alone, and near death in the Wyoming wilderness. Though she is saved by a man with a face cut from stone, she still grieves the husband who died on their journey west. Hannah needs a husband, but does she dare marry another stranger?
Flint Creed has also lost someone he loved—when the woman he hoped to marry chose his younger brother instead. Now he must find a ranch wife of his own. But every female in the remote Wyoming Territory is too old, too young, or already married . . . until he discovers Hannah on the prairie. Flint doesn’t pretend to love her, but he doesn’t tell her he loves another woman, either. Hannah doesn’t pretend to love him, but she doesn’t tell him about the child she carries. Though danger surrounds them on the Wyoming frontier, the greatest threats of all are the secrets within—revelations that could destroy the new life Hannah and Flint have begun to cherish.
REVIEW: I was looking forward to reading the second book in this series ever since I read the first one!
Ms. Joan Johnston’s tales are new to me, but I’ve already tracked down almost all of her back list and hope to read them in between my Regency World.
What originally attracted me to this particular series, and for that matter this author, is the way she develops not just her characters, but the families within those stories. Everything about her books just has that feel of ‘saga’. They’re all connected and just sort of ‘grow’ on you…You just get hooked, and once you read one story, off you go to next and on and on!
This time we have Hannah’s story and as much as I liked her, I was on a war path with her twin, Hatty. Holy Crap! She might have driven me to murder were I her sister! If there was trouble to be had, she was in it to her eyeballs!
‘Wyoming Bride’ picked up where ‘Texas Bride’ left off and Hannah is doing exactly what her sister did, marries a man just to save herself and her two sisters, from the orphanage.
It was great to watch Hannah become strong and decisive woman. Like I said, character development seems to be one of many talents Ms. Johnson has.
As for our hero, Flint Creed, I thought him a very complex and it was too much fun being in his head, just waiting for him to figure out that the woman he thinks is his ‘soul mate’ is nothing but an infatuation.
And then we have the secondary characters, Ransom and Emaline, which are as well drawn as the first and following them was even more fun!
There were many times I wanted to strangle this idiotic chick and tell Ransom to drop her like a hot potato!
If you’ve never read any of Joan Johnston’s books, here is what you’re missing: great writing, wonderful three-dimensional characters and stories that have an epic feel to them. She excels in bringing her readers to go through sadness to elation within a paragraph! That’s a gift!
Looking forward to Hatty’s story which will be out later this year, ‘Montana Bride’ and then, the one I can hardly contain my excitement for, Josie’s in ‘Blackthorne’s Bride’!
*Book provided by the publisher through NetGalley.
