The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection
by multiple authors (see details below)
My rating: 3.25 / 5
Genre: Christian historical romance, short stories
This book contains short stories from 9 different authors, taking place in the late 1800s, mostly in the western USA. Each story contains a marriage-of-convenience-type romance, which is my favorite kind, when done well. My overall rating for the book is an average of my ratings for each story, shown below. Below the ratings is a brief review for each story.
“Substitute Bride” by Angela Bell – 5 / 5
“Bridal Whispers” by Angela Breidenbach – 4.5 / 5
“Mule Dazed” by Lisa Carter – 2 / 5
“Sweetwater Bride” by Mary Connealy – 1 / 5
“A Highbrow Hoodwink” by Rebecca Jepson – 4 / 5
“Not So Pretty Penny” by Amy Lillard – 2.5 / 5
“All’s Fair” by Gina Welborn – 3.5 / 5
“The Colorado Coincidence” by Kathleen Y’Barbo – 3 / 5
“Railroaded into Love” by Rose Ross Zediker – 3.5 / 5
“Substitute Bride” (5 / 5) is the only story that takes place in England, diving right into a story patterned after Jacob and Leah (from the Bible). It’s short enough not to get too much into the deceit that brought Elliott and Gwen together, but if too much time had been spent dwelling on it, it might have gotten annoying. The culmination of Gwen’s self-perception and Elliott’s odd hobby was very well done and the only moment in this book that brought tears to my eyes.
“Bridal Whispers” (4.5 / 5) is full of bad assumptions and misunderstandings, but not so much to make me roll my eyes (and that’s considering I have a low tolerance for these things). In fact, they were probably completely understandable in this story of a widower marrying the cousin of his late wife. I have to say, though, that the long shadow of the first wife would have been a huge problem for me, especially when Burton took her portrait into his bedroom so it wouldn’t hang over his new wife.
“Mule Dazed” (2 / 5) contains one of the worst male leads in the book, the local sheriff forced to marry a woman he was locked in his own jail with overnight. He spends most of the story lusting after his wife, Hattie, while still meanly telling her that he can’t wait to be rid of her when the judge returns and they can annul their marriage. Then he blames her for his own rash outburst in bidding higher than necessary at a basket auction. He’s just a jerk!
“Sweetwater Bride” (1 / 5) has the one male lead that’s worse than the one in the previous story. He’s not quite so rude overall, but he hogties an isolated woman who lives alone in a secluded valley so that he can take her to his parents, because she’s afraid to leave her valley, even though he first offered to bring his parents to her. Then he kisses this girl that he knows is innocent and naive and knows nothing of men or the world in general. How creepy! On top of that, this woman who has barely seen anyone but her dad for years somehow knows that the eyes of the guy who kidnapped her are an unusual color, plus she stops talking like someone who’s been stunted socially far too quickly. Add the author’s writing style that is full of poor grammar and confusing dialogue, and it’s my least favorite in the collection.
“A Highbrow Hoodwink” (4 / 5) is nice and sweet with an overall theme of forgiveness and leaving the past behind. I wasn’t a huge fan of the plan to lie and say that Katie’s son was Henry’s, rather than his brother’s, in a Christian setting, since at no point do they regret or repent of this. But I did like the way everything ended up with this small family.
“Not So Pretty Penny” (2.5 / 5) is not bad, but not great either. The romance part wasn’t bad, but the rest of the plot was weak. Wash, the male lead, was wrongfully convicted of killing his sister, framed by the actual killer. And Wash’s plan now is to find Wash and somehow get him locked up for the crime, neat and simple, even though the man had already convinced everyone that Wash was the guilty one based on only his own testimony? There was a major unexplained coincidence in the climax, and I just do not buy this happy ending.
“All’s Fair” (3.5 / 5) is the first story in this collection that I felt like would have been better with room to expand. A quickie marriage of a man and woman on opposite sides of a family feud to keep members of both side out of prison calls for a bit more depth than this story was able to get into, and there really wasn’t much resolution. On the other hand, though the story starts with an incident that leads to strong hatred between the two MCs, and by the time the bulk of the story starts 4 years later, it’s been mostly resolved on both sides (independently of each other), so the only obstacle to this couple’s happiness is weak and feels contrived.
“The Colorado Coincidence” (3 / 5) was an overall forgettable story for me. I struggled to remember much about the story for the review. So it wasn’t bad, but since I’m not a fan of major coincidences and this story hinges on one, it wasn’t destined to be a favorite. I was at least relieved that Mack didn’t trick Gloree into marrying him by letting her believe that he was the man who’d been sent by her late husband to marry her. I also liked Gloree challenging Mack to ask God to show up.
“Railroaded into Love” by Rose Ross Zediker – (3.5 / 5) is another one where I feel like there needed to be at least a little more time to explore part of the story. I like the way that Molly took to the street urchin, and he clung to her kindness. But since Molly’s brother’s guilt or innocence was a big part of both the marriage of convenience and the rest of the plot, it didn’t get enough resolution, in my opinion. I think this feeling in more than one of these stories is due to the fact that I always prefer a romance be more in the background of a solid plot, and by necessity, the romance in stories as short as these tends to be pushed to the front.
In the end, though my overall rating for this collection isn’t great, there were a few gems in there that I’m really glad I read. The Old West setting isn’t my favorite, and I’m not a huge fan of short stories, but my husband brought the book home from the library for me, thinking I’d like it, and I always give his random book finds a try. I’m glad I did in this case, and I think that others who enjoy Christian romance from this time period will probably like more of these stories than I did.
Find out more about The Lassoed by Marriage Romance Collection
If you’ve read this book, or read it in the future, feel free to let me know what you think!
A Journey of Words 