3.9

This was a cute mail order bride/marriage of convenience plot. The spunky Sadie had a good head on her shoulders and she combines a love of feeding people with practical business savvy. This was a clean read! I really enjoyed it!

The hero kinda sucks.

This was pretty bad.
Caldwell needed have done more research into that time period. In lots of places it didn't feel like the right period. The language didn't always feel right and there were other inconsistencies.
The two main characters had little chemistry and I'd like to be warned that it would be a clean fiction before I read it. Reading a shitty romance that at least has sex in it is less of a waste of time.
The plot was boring. like they kept on hinting at potential problems and then smooth them over before anything comes of it.

It was okay. A good clean story and a good break from the non clean stories I’ve been reading lately. But I wish there was chemistry and romance in the book.

A few twists on the mail-order bride western romance that made the story very different from the fare found in this sub-subgenre. I really liked Sadie from the beginning, but Tripp took a lot longer to warm up to - the author really had the personality of chef nailed in the character of Tripp. I do want to read the next story in the series, which involved a dear friend of Tripp's and Sadie's BFF from Chicago, but I don't know if I want to read the whole series just yet. The writing was good, if a bit repetitive (the motives behind the marriage).