Cynthia WoolfReseñas

I enjoyed this book. The hero has lost his wife in death and has children to look after, so of course he needs a wife. The heroine is brought up in society and feels its empty and worthless and wants to live a different life. The characters are like-able and the interaction between the children add to the depth of the story.

An enjoyable tale.

Its a good story. The characters are well developed, its well written, the story-line is clear and interesting. There is just enough description of the life style and events so you can transport yourself into the period of history.

I enjoyed.

I enjoyed this book. There are a few editing problems but not enough to deter my readings. It was a very sweet romance with a little mystery thrown in. Can't imagine being a mail order bride but know that it was fairly common back then. Still a weird situation to be in but Clare came out fine!

I received a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is the 3rd book in the series but you don't need to read the others first. Although you will be missing out if you don't read them at all because they are all very good! Hope's Crossing is a sweet little town with wonderful people and the mail order brides just add to it. Each of the brides has a very interesting story behind why they became mail order brides and provide some mystery to the romances. This time the groom is a single father who needs a mother for his children. He's not really looking for a wife for himself but his bride has other ideas. Great storyline!

I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

A Husband for Victoria (Brides of Golden City Book 1) by Cynthia Woolf. Great story to a new series!
Well written and well excuted. The storyline flows seamlessly and effortlessly. The characters are flawed, engaging and believable for the era.
Victoria Coleman and Andrew Mayfield, Andrew's small child, Suse, make a flawed but entertaining couple. Mail order bride, danger, secrets, betrayal, angst, turmoil, a female villain, suspense and love makes A HUSBAND FOR VICTORIA a great Historical Western Romance. The villain, Mildred Thomas, is determined to exact her revenge for a wrong she thinks Victoria.
A intense at times, beautiful love story! I enjoyed the way Ms. Woolf, mixed delicate issues into this story and how she included a small child. Awesome read!

"I voluntarily received a complimentary copy, however, these are my honest opinions. I was in no way required nor compensated to write a review."

Rating: 4 5
Heat rating: Sweet/Clean
Reviewer: AprilR

I received a copy of this book to read in exchange for an honest review. Frankly, I thought the story progressed a little too slowly and was very predictable. While the end was satisfactory, I thought the main character, Cora, was a little on the snobbish side and found it hard to relate to her. I also thought some of the phrasing was a little too modern for the period.

Overall, I liked the story and it was well-written. The attention to certain details was appreciated.

clunky writing, not very good

Fair. Gal shows up after being married by proxy, only the doctor groom doesn’t know anything about it. It is legal - he really did sign the paper, after his grandfather tricked him.½

Nellie needed someone to take care of her and her children. She knew that love would probably not be a part of that partnership. But then she met the man who asked for her hand in marriage through an agency for mail order brides. And things began to change for her. Change for the better.

I like the fact that this book is an easy read. I don't think the language is completely in-tune with the setting/era of the story. "Oh my God" doesn't strike me as a common phrase used and if anything, it would be frowned upon by anyone else who heard a person use it!

I like the chemistry between Sarah and John. However, I don't need the graphic play-by-play of the sex. We know they'll do it. We know they'll enjoy it. If they didn't enjoy each other's company, they wouldn't bother to do the deed at the end of the day. It's that simple.

I wouldn't mind reading more books by Ms. Woolf. She has the chops! I'd just prefer cutting out the sex and enjoying everything else.

Not the best book, but it's not terrible either. It's just not something I'd keep in my own library.

I enjoyed the story a lot but wasn't too thrilled with the sexual content. That aside the story was fun and very good. I really liked the characters of Ben and Emily. Emily is almost a saint to be able to put up with Bens' mother. I received an ebook copy from the author no I gave this review of my own free will.

This was a wonderful Christmas novella that would be great to read at any time of the year. Charlotte is cold and hungry and pregnant when she meets up with Adam. He takes her to his cabin to help her and delivers her baby. She is on the run from a bad man and he is trying to survive since his family died. It was hard to put this book down. They end up making a great couple. I receive an ebook copy of this book from the author for a fair and honest opinion.

This is a great western romance taken place in 1887. Author, Cynthia Woolf, does a marvelous job of describing everything so you feel like you are in the storyline yourself. She makes the characters so real and true to life as well that you really do get swept up into the romance of the book. Add Christmas to it and it’s the perfect book.

The story is about Charlotte Walker who is pregnant by her late husband and being abused by her brother-in-law. She makes the decision to run away when she gets the chance. Unfortunately, she leaves in a blizzard on Christmas Eve. As she is riding her horse she goes into labor and falls off the horse. Suddenly a man appears, pulls her up and takes her into his cabin. This is not just any man either, he’s a handsome, sweet, wonderful person who ends up helping her deliver the baby. Adam Masters lives by himself in this cabin and not use to having someone else there. Even though Charlotte knows that her brother-in-law will be after her she feels she must leave Adam’s cabin since she has fallen in love with him and sure he doesn’t want her and the baby. Little did she know that Adam felt the same way.

I really loved Alice Carter and Dr. Jeremiah Killarney. It would be hard enough to be a mail order bride, but to have a child also would be near impossible. I hope to read the first three books in the series because I enjoyed this one so much. I loved that Alice was a doctor also. It was nice that Jeremiah could see her as a doctor once he saw her work. I received a copy of this as an ebook from the author for a fair and honest opinion.

This is my first read by author Cynthia Woolf and won’t be my last. I loved this book and so glad it was a Sunday so I could let myself get lost in it and not have to put it down. The author did a great job of describing the characters and their surroundings as if you were living there with them in the Montana Territory in the late 1800’s. Great job of character development. It was also refreshing reading about a strong women doctor who knew who she was, what she had to do and yet still couldn’t control everything such as her emotions.

The story is about Dr. Alice Carter who 6 months ago lost her doctor husband to a murdered who thought she and her husband were responsible for his wife’s death. She needed money to keep her and her 3 year old daughter, Melly, alive. Unable to find employment as a doctor in New York City so close in morning, she decides to be a mail order bride to start anew. Meanwhile, Dr. Jeremiah Kilarney has a busy practice and needs a wife and nurse to help him out in the small town of Hope’s Crossing. Though a matchmaking service the two are brought together.

Alice starts to fall in love with Dr. Kilarney but is afraid to let herself go and feels guilty about not loving her dead husband. Dr. Kilarney loves being with Alice but is too afraid to love again since he past love left him. The two must live as husband and wife and yet both are afraid of their own feelings. Then the man who murdered her husband comes to Hope’s Crossing to finish what he believes is necessary by murdering Alice. What a delightful story line and it is intertwined with Alice’s young daughter,an older man who becomes a part of the family, and the fear of someone out to murder her.

I highly recommend this book as it is a truly moving family story with a lot of different things going on. I especially enjoyed the interaction between Alice and Jeremiah.

Anyone who knows me will quickly realize that I love the Civil War, but this is post-Civil War, so I'm still seeing the effects of the Civil War in this book. Nellie is a widow with two kids. Weary of the life with her harsh and cruel in-laws, she makes a bold (and brave!) decision--move across the country. Obviously the city isn't big enough for her and her in-laws, so she uproots the kids and hauls them off to San Francisco where she's already promised to marry a Blake Malone.

Blake is another interesting character. He's single, but he wants a family so he can accomplish other things on his business agenda. All he needs is the impression of a happy wife and family and then he can really get down to busness. There is some chemistry between the two, but I really liked how the youngest child literally forms an attachment to Blake. She's never had a father, so naturally, Blake is all she knows and trusts without question. I like how the author shows the slight distrust between Nellie's son and Blake. The child is loyal to his dead father and not-so-quick to embrace the idea of a new father stepping into his life.

I know other people had complaints about sexual content in this book. I don't care for it either! BUT...I liked this book for different reasons than the norm. Yes, it's another mail-order bride story, but I really like how Cynthia Woolf put some focus on the children in the story rather than throw them in as barely visble extras to fill the pages.

When you read the story, I think you'll enjoy these aspects as well as I did.

I should probably confess: I liked the synopsis better than the book. I think the book is good, but it needs some work to make it better. I don't see the hook. I don't feel the tug/drawn-in feeling. It's a good read, but it's not a great read. Cat is a fiery head-strong woman and Duncan is a man with his level head on those strong shoulders. Great, right? Yeah, the set-up is good, but the execution is a bit lacking.

I already knew that they'd wind up together. In some ways, the book was too predictable. The cast, however, is a good one. I just think they're a bit on the weak side.

I wanted to enjoy this book, especially given that it dealt with a strong woman trying to make her way in a more conventional world. The problem was that neither Jo nor Sam were particularly realistic characters. The way Jo behaves makes it impossible to believe she could have survived as an independent bounty hunter- she made stupid decisions for no comprehensible reasons other than to create a "conflict" for them to resolve. She and Sam had no true chemistry and he was just kind of a jerk at times. There were also a lot of distracting grammar and spelling errors that made for a frustrating read. I certainly won't be looking to read the rest of the series.

I received a free copy from NetGalley for an honest review. Bella is running away from an arranged marriage and her only option to escape is as a mail0order bride. Alex needs a wife to help him raise his daughters and they seem to be matched. However, Bella didn't anticipate falling in love. She now has to teach Alex to love her. The storyline was sweet but my only critique is that is seemed too fairy-tale like for Bella to fall in love so quickly with a stranger. Overall, it was a nice read.

Nellie was a good book. Nothing spectacular, ALL of the ideas and "twists" are things we've read before. It was just another story about mail order bride with children and how she and her new husband fall in love and deal with an unexpected danger. Murderous, jealous ex-lover of the husband in this case. Good for a quick fluff read.

I haven't read the first 2 books in this series but I found I wasn't lost as this is a standalone, previous characters are mentioned though so I might just go back and catch up.
Molly is going to marry Ben, she is a mail order bride, and by moving out west she also hopes to escape a dangerous bad guy who is trying to kill her.
The couple don't hesitate to marry when they meet but Ben keeps his true feelings for Molly to himself until her life is threatened. When he finds out the danger he comes up to scratch and admits his feelings for her and she admits hers.
A nice story with a great ending.

Margaret "Maggie" Selby is a widow who suffered for twelve years in an arranged and abusive marriage. Now she runs a successful matchmaking business in New York, pairing women with suitable and trustworthy men. As a survivor of an abusive relationship, Maggie has sworn never to let a man have control over her and her life ever again. She has been corresponding with her latest client, Caleb Black, whose letters have ignited an unfamiliar spark within her. But he is to be set up with another woman, so Maggie can only wish for what she can't have. Caleb Black wants only one woman to be his future bride, and that woman is Maggie. He feels he knows what he needs to know about her, and he wants her. But first he'll have to get her to leave New York and make the trip to Colorado. Sparks fly when they meet in person. Can a woman who never wants to become a man's "property" ever again, and a man who doesn't know what love is, find a way to overcome their personal demons to get their HEA?

I loved the hero of this story. Caleb was a widower who was left to raise his daughter all by herself after his wife had died after giving birth. He was a great and loving father, a hard worker, and one sexy rancher. I loved his honesty and tenacity where Maggie was concerned. His cheeky side was also very appealing in the way he indulged her with her plans to bring prospective brides out to the ranch. In all honesty, I think he carried this story more than the heroine did.

Maggie. I can't say that I liked her all that much. This story focused a lot on her past shaping her present to the point that it was repeated a lot throughout the story. So much so that her constant excuses were all I remembered of the story. I found her a rather difficult character to connect with. If we take her past into consideration, she wasn't afraid of men or getting close to one. She was just afraid of giving up the freedom she'd found with becoming a widow. Even though she knew that Caleb was nothing like her former husband, she often treated him as if he would become what she feared most even though he assured her he would never take her job away from her. When she realized she'd fallen in love with him, it scared her enough to want to run, but at the same time she would have stayed if Caleb could say those three little words. I would have liked to have seen a bit more character growth from the heroine near the end; an epiphany that she could either take a risk and grab life by the horns or continue to let her past dictate her life and not bemoan how lonely she would be without him.

I didn't completely buy their chemistry because the foundation of it was probably established "off-screen" in those letters. If it was mentioned, I can't remember what about her appealed to him so much that he had to have her. Aside from that, my favorite parts of this story where her actual matchmaking attempts. I thought it was cute that nothing went the way she had intended them. The love scenes were hot and steamy, so make sure you have a fan handy. The ending was a little predictable, and again Maggie had a moment where I wanted to shake her hard, but thanks to some meddling friends, all's well that ends well. Even though this book is a part of a series, it can stand on its own.

Disclaimer: I received a review copy from the author via Black Lion Virtual Book Tours for the purpose of an honest review.

Jo Shafter has decided to become a wife after finally putting the man who killed her family in jail. She becomes Sam Longworth’s mail order bride but both come into the marriage with secrets. Neither is willing to admit they love the other and yet they both care a great deal. Jo has things to learn about being a wife and keeping a house but when she finds out that Billy Jackson has escaped and is looking for her her bounty hunting skills reemerge and one of Sam’s secrets is shared, too. Eventually all is put right in their world and the end of another mail order bride story is concluded.

Thank you to NetGalley for the ARC to read and review.

Orphan Genevieve “Genny” Copeland heads to Nevada as a mail order bride hoping that the man and two children waiting at the end of her journey will provide her with the family she has wanted for so very long. She is hopeful that Stuart MacDonnell, widow and father, will want a true marriage with love and children and everything else. Billy and Lucy love Genny from the very beginning but Stuart is a tough nut to crack. The story is sweet and fun and what you would expect from a mail order bride story but without anything to set it truly apart from other books of the genre so I am giving it three stars because I liked it and would recommend it to others looking for a mail order romance to eat on a free afternoon.

Thank you to NetGalley through whom I received the ARC to read and review.