Stand-In Groom

Stand-In Groom by Kaye Dacus

Barbour Publishing, 2008

302 pages

Inspirational, Romance

1st in series-Brides of Bonneterre

4.5/5 stars

Source: Received from netgalley

Summary: Anne Hawthorne meets George Laurence, tall, good-looking, Christian, and not available. So not available in fact that she is planning his wedding to another woman. But George isn't exactly what he's portraying. Can Anne and George work through it to establish the kind of relationship they've been longing for?

Thoughts: Just reading the first few chapters left me feeling very inspired; I appreciated seeing their prayers and Anne's routine of keeping a prayer journal. Sometimes I rely solely on my memory, which is not the best method, instead of writing down my prayers so that I can reflect on how God answers them.

I've never been a fan of straightforward contemporary romance. Chick-lit*, fine. Historical, sure. YA, yes please! I guess I felt that something was missing. And that something apparently is God. I loved this book and would have to say that it is probably my second favorite inspirational fiction book (after Redeeming Love, obvs because that's the gold standard). And it stands pretty high on my list of favorite romances.

Anne and George were so obviously meant for each other and they built a solid foundation based on friendship and trust (although they had some troubles with the latter) and I guess that was my one tiny problem with the book. Anne was very broken when it came to trust issues due to her parents and her one previous boyfriend. Consequently I felt like she overreacted sometimes.

I also enjoyed her extended family (she has a HUGE family) who were colorful and most seemed carefully drawn and differentiated. Luckily this is a trilogy so I'll get to spend more time with them and find out more about them.

Overall: Outstanding! I'm very excited to read more of Dacus's work.

Cover: It's okay; I like the covers but I'm not a fan of the cropped off head.

Upcoming: About halfway through this (and I would have finished it faster if it wasn't an ebook that I could only read on my laptop), I looked on netgalley to see if they had the next two books in the series. They did, so expect reviews of those throughout the rest of August. I also found another book by Dacus starting a new series so expect that at some point too.

*I'm not a fan of the phrase chick-lit because 1. I've seen it to be used derogatorily as if books by, about, and for women are less praiseworthy than those about men and 2. Most fiction reading is done by females so really everything should fall under that label and anything that targets male readers should be the subsection. I do understand the very human need to classify and I guess that's where this comes from. I do consider myself a fan of chick-lit and I have several recommendations to look in to once I start to visit my library again.