Overall: 3.5 rounded ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Readability: 📖📖📖
Feels: 🦋🦋🦋
Emotional Depth: 💔💔💔💔
Sexual Tension: ⚡⚡⚡
Romance: 💞💞💞💞
Sensuality: 💋💋💋
Sex Scene Length: 🍑🍑🍑
Steam Scale (Number of Sex Scenes): 🔥🔥🔥
Humor: Yes, a bit
Perspective: Third person I think only from the hero’s point of view
Cliffhanger: No, this ends with a happily ever after
Epilogue: Yes

Should I read in order?
It’s not necessary for a rebel reader – there’s character overlap and some light page time with the mains from book 1, but each romance does stand alone.

Basic plot:
Julian is holding out for true love – and wonders if he’s found it when he meets the cook of the boarding house he’s staying at out west.

Give this a try if you want:
- Not 100% sure on time frame here, but I think it’s late 1800s? The hero’s family is a part of the upper echelons of New York society
- American west/New York setting (maybe half and half or a bit more in the Western setting)
- American mains (?) – Julian has mixed heritage (he is the son of a Union solder and a free Black woman and a part of the upper 400 in NY), and Violet has a Mexican accent (but I’m not 100% sure on her family history)
- consent is a focus
- instalust/instalove (on the hero’s part) that kind of leads into friends to lovers because he distances himself
- class difference – hero is rich and a respected member of society and heroine was a maid/cook at a boarding house in the West
- cartographer/artist heroine
- marriage of convenience
- cinnamon roll hero
- mid steam – 3 full scenes but they are on the light side (details and length)

Ages:
- Hero is 21, didn’t catch heroine but would guess a similar age?

First Line
Julian stepped inside the boarding house and cautioned a look around him.

My thoughts:
I liked this one okay. I love the narrator – sped up a bit, his voice was perfection. So I had a fun time listening to this while doing some other things around my house, but the romance wasn’t strong enough for me to want to really love this one.

I also think this one was only from the hero's perspective, which I love!

I think maybe I had in my head ‘mail order groom’ and honestly this didn’t fit that for me. Yes, there’s a mail order groom aspect to it, but it was more the hero rescuing her from mail order grooms 😆 So I might have set myself up for certain expectations and was disappointed.

This one starts with a bit of instalust for the hero, but he distances himself. So it’s more of a slow burn with them getting to know each other and becoming friends. There was lot of plot drama in this one to me – lots of society catty behavior that I struggled with a bit. And then they move on to New York in the second half and the angst picked up a bit and I appreciated that (loooove my angst), but also the miscommunication came in.

I think I struggled with this one a bit, because while the mains were on page quite a bit together, I wanted more bonding between them. More alone time where they were really getting to know each other. There was some tension building. But it all felt a bit slow. It was cute though. It was pleasant. I’m definitely going to read more in the series and hope I find something I love a bit more.

Content warnings: These should be taken as a minimum of what to expect. It’s very possible I have missed some.

- some scenes of racism and judgmental attitudes – ‘gangs of Sioux’ is used by side characters ignorant about Indigenous culture, intolerance to poly relationships (the hero’s sister is in a MFM relationship and there’s comments)
- death of parents mentioned
- bullying and harassment (lots of ‘mean girl’ drama)

Locations of kisses/intimate scenes: Her scenes are a bit on the light side – like foreplay was decent but actual penetration/orgasm was lighter

 
Safe sex: 

I don’t believe so, but they are married 

 
Chapter 12 – kisses
Chapter 13 – 🔥kisses and oral for her
Chapter 16 – 🔥kisses in a storm in the river, her on top
Chapter 19 – 🔥her on top