A Bride for Keeps

October 8, 2013

Title: A Bride for Keeps
Author: Melissa Jagears
Publisher: Bethany House
Pages: 334
ISBN: 978-0-7642-1168-3
Publication Date: October 1st, 2013

Synopsis:
Everett Cline will never humiliate himself by seeking a mail-order bride. Not again. He's already been jilted by three mail-order brides and figures a wife just isn't in his future. However, a well-meaning neighbor hasn't given up on seeing him settled, so she goes behind his back to bring yet another woman to town for him.

Julia Lockwood has never been anything more than a pretty pawn for her father or a business acquisition for her former fiance. A mail-order marriage in faraway Kansas is a last resort, but she'll do anything to leave her life in Massachusetts and the heartbreak she's experienced there.

Although Everett doesn't see how a beautiful, cultured woman like Julia could be happy sharing his simple life, he could really use a helpmate on his homestead. Determined to prove she's more than just a pretty face, Julia agrees to a marriage in name only. Faced with the harsh realities of life on the prairie and hesitant to explore the tentative feelings growing between them, can Everett and Julia ever let each other in long enough to fall in love?
Review:
A Bride for Keeps by Melissa Jagears was a very touching story about over coming the hurts of the past. Julia Lockwood and Everett Cline each have been hurt  and each are trying their best to move on from the past, but also trying to protect themselves for the future.

Julia comes by train to a small farming community in Kansas after writing letters to Everett Cline's best friend's wife, Rachel. Rachel had put out an ad for a wife for Everett and Julia responded. After a few months of corresponding, Rachel and Julia become good friends and Julia agrees to marry Everett and meet Rachel. It is the perfect escape from her abusive past. Julia will have respectable man around her for protection and she can offer friendship.

Everett has tried to marry before, many times, about five times, but something has always happened and he's never made it to the alter. He's basically given up on being married and having a help mate. He also doesn't appreciate the jokes that have been going around town at his expense, or that several men in the community are now married to the women he had hoped to marry. It isn't until the day that Julia arrives on the train, that he is told Rachel wants to help him find and secure a wife.

Everett faces a lot of trust issues after having been jilted so many times. Julia faces trust issues as well, but it stems from the hurt she has suffered from the men in her past. It is with their time together, Everett and Julia learn to face and over come their past.

A Bride for Keeps was a sweet romance. Rachel, Julia and Everett's friend is a fun character who offers great advice to her two friends and a few laughs to the reader.

Too Read
4 out of 5

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