mail order bride

The Cowboy’s E-Mail Order Bride by Cora Seton

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne
Grade: B+
Hotness Level: Blaze
Kink Level: No Kink
Genre: Contemporary, Mail Order Bride
Series: The Cowboys of Chance Creek #1
Published: 4/30/13
Reviewed by Kate
228 pages

After a series of bad events in his life, Ethan is drunk and goes on a rant about what the perfect ranch wife would need to be.  Unknown to him, his friends video tape the rant, edit it, and post it to YouTube as a “looking for a wife” add.  Autumn works for a hoity-toity magazine in the city.  Due to upcoming cutbacks, her job is on the line.  She responds to the YouTube add and plans on writing a story about her adventure.


Mail order brides are some of my absolute favorite romances to read.  Although this is the first modern day one I’ve read.  I was a little nervous about it, to be honest.  Just how would an e-mail order bride story in today’s world really work?  What kind of situations could the hero and heroine be in that would make this the solution?


By page 15, I was pretty sure that I hated Autumn.  Ethan’s friends had gotten him into this mess, but Autumn jumped in with eyes wide open-planning on using Ethan.  By page 20, I was starting to like Autumn a little more. She’s battling her own inner demons and I began to see where she was coming from a bit.  Of course it helped that Ethan didn’t come clean with her right away.  It wasn’t a book where one person was lying and the other was a saint.  It became a story of secrets, which I typically despise.  Not so with this book.  Watching these two work through all the secrets was an enjoyable journey.


If you like mail order bride stories give this one a chance.  Cora Seton has created a pair that I rooted for in Ethan and Autumn and she’s introduced us to a cast of secondary characters that leaves me wanting more.  I’ve added the rest of the Cowboys of Chance Creek series to my TBR pile.


Have you read any modern day mail order bride romances?  Do you have any I should add to my TBR pile?

Game of Hearts by Kate Donovan

Posted on by Dirty Girl Anne

Game of Hearts (Happily Ever After Company, #1)
Grade-C+
Hotness Level-Blaze
Kink Level-None
Series-Happily Ever After Company #1
Genre-historical, mail order bride
Reviewed by Kate

Megan and Suzannah have been best friends since they were little girls. They promised each other that they would get married at the same time and live close enough to each other that their children would be able to play together.

They consult a matchmaker to arrange marriages for them. When they are unable to find two acceptable husbands that live close enough together, they decide Megan will accept a contract with Dennis Riordan. Suzannah will accompany Megan on her journey and then pick a husband at that point. I can’t see anything going wrong, can you?

While on their journey, Megan meets and falls in love with Ben, but she feels unable to marry him due to her marriage contract. Ben follows them to their destination and is there when the girls discover that Dennis is really Aengus Yates.

Suzannah has been in love with Aengus Yates since she was a little girl. But he has broken her heart twice already. Once when, at age 11, she asked him to wait for her to be old enough to marry, but her married someone else instead. The second time, when he left his wife and two young sons and never came back.

Aengus can’t marry Megan, despite their contract, once he sees how much she loves Ben. But can Suzannah marry Aengus after he has already broken her heart?

I think you can tell that the story is a bit involved. Definitely much easier to read than it is to summarize. What I’ve written about above is just the first half of the book. The scond half follows Suzannah as she adjusts to marriage and tries to help Aengus mend the broken relationship with his sons.

While I enjoyed the story, I don’t think I’ll be buying the other books in the series.