Carol Moncado

Hey! Look at that! Posting a book review on Wednesday! 😉

AND it’s Erica Vetsch’s book too! Have I mentioned I <3 Erica? She’s so way cool! And my favorite orange panda rhombus too! [Yeah, most of you won’t get that. A few of you might ;).]

Anyway… I picked up A Bride’s Portrait of Dodge City, Kansas while at the ACFW Conference. And since Erica is our guest blogger over on the Pentalk blog today, I thought I’d post a review to go with it [I also hope to post about NaNoWriMo later today but we’ll see…]

So…

From the Back Cover:

Hoping to leave the shadows of her shady yesteryears behind, Adeline Reid is focusing on her photography career. But when her ex-boyfriend’s compatriot in crime shows up in Dodge City her entire past is threatened by exposure. Can Addie keep her secrets while helping to catch a killer? Deputy Miles Carr’s investigation into a shopkeeper’s murder leads him to Addie’s door. Will his attraction to this female photographer keep him from catching the true culprit? Or will Addie lead him off course in more ways than one?

Deputy Miles Carr has his hands full trying to keep the peace in Dodge City and find a local shopkeeper’s killer. When his inquiries lead him to the door of Addie Reid’s photography studio, he finds himself more than a little distracted. Does this beauty hold the clue to the killer’s identity? 

This is the fifth or sixth book of Erica’s I’ve read [no… wait… I read a series of 3 Heartsongs, then a 3-in-1 of Heartsongs [does that count as 1 or 3?] and then another Heartsong… so can someone else do the math?!?! ;)]. I’ve enjoyed all of them but I loved that this one was trade length rather than category*. I became more attached to the characters and felt they were somewhat better developed than in the Heartsongs books**.

There are really four main characters. Addie and her best friend, Fran. Deputies Miles and Jonas. Addie and Miles take the stage front and center and are “more main” than Fran and Jonas, but we see plenty from Fran and Jonas’ points-of-view [POV] to know what they’re seeing, thinking and feeling about any number of things – including each other.

I loved that! So often in a romance Addie and Miles would be the only POV characters*** but having Fran and Jonas in there too was like a bonus mini-romance book in there :D.

Ms. Vetsch Erica weaves in so many details about how the world worked in the days not long after the Civil War, particularly about photography in it’s infancy. [Have I mentioned recently how much I love my digital camera?!^]

Both Addie and Miles have things in their past that need to be dealt with and Erica does that well.

This one is a keeper [even if it wasn’t personally signed ;)] and rereader [even if the TBR pile continues to grow].

Plus the epilogue is swoon worthy. /big deep happy waffy sigh/

Overall: 9.5 out of 10 stars

*Category is books like Barbour’s Heartsongs Presents or Harlequin’s Love Inspired lines; typically they’re 25-30% or so shorter, sometimes more depending on the books, than trade length or ‘regular’ books.

**That isn’t meant to disparage Erica’s other books at all! I loved them and I loved the characters! I just tend not to get as invested in shorter books because I usually read them very quickly and there’s just not enough time [pages or word count] to become as invested with them as there is in the longer works!

***Yes, I’m guilty of that too! But in my defense… I write mostly in first person! Keeping track of two first people is hard enough!

^I do miss having actual prints too though :D.