Amy

After helping her grandfather at their Boston auction house, Miranda Wimplegate discovers she’s accidentally sold a powerful family’s prized portrait to an anonymous bidder. Desperate to appease the people who could ruin them forever, they track it to the Missouri Ozarks and make an outlandish offer to buy the local auction house and all its holdings before the painting can move again.

Upon crossing the country, however, Miranda and her grandfather discover their new auction house doesn’t deal in fine antiques, but in livestock. And its frustratingly handsome manager, Wyatt Ballentine, is annoyed to discover his fussy new bosses don’t know a thing about the business he’s single-handedly kept afloat. Faced with more heads of cattle than they can count—but no mysterious painting—Miranda and Wyatt form an unlikely but charged partnership to try and prevent a bad situation from getting worse.

Jennings throws twist after twist into At Love’s Bidding.  While the ending isn’t a complete surprise, I didn’t have it all figured out, either, and I love when an author surprises me.

The author’s country background shines through brightly.  She sets an excellent scene, my very favorite part being the sale barn.  Having grown up just a few miles from a sale barn that actually made history books with a weekly auction just like the one that she describes, I loved reading about the diversity of goods and the importance of the auction to the community. 

That’s not the kind of auction house that Miranda expected to find when she pulled into Missouri, however, and that’s only one way that Jennings injects humor into the story.  She does so a bit impishly, but the wide cast of characters – and Grandfather Wimplegate’s odd actions – keep the mood from ever becoming too dark. 

Wyatt is a great main character.  He’s flawed, handsome, and a hidden prince, and who wouldn’t like that?  His ‘princely’ status, while a bit fantastic, does make for an exciting story, and I enjoyed reading about his spiritual and emotional journey.

Miranda doesn’t make him journey alone.  Although taught to look out for others, her snobbishness causes her to miss out on many great people around her, and that leads her on her own quest for maturity.  Often, Miranda’s contentment to drift and let others make the decisions for her would weaken her standing in my eyes, but she stood up for others in some pretty astounding ways in this story, and I admire the feisty friend waiting to come out.

At Love’s Bidding is quite different from Jennings’ other books – fewer cowboys, a weaker female lead – but the suspense and the twisting plot keep this book as a Jennings’ great.  By the time I reached the end, I wasn’t ready to – I had fallen for the characters and wasn’t ready to turn the last page on them.  I certainly hope Wyatt, Miranda, and the crew in Pine Gap make a reappearance in another Jennings’ book, because I want to hear more about them.

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Regina Jennings is a graduate of Oklahoma Baptist University with a degree in English and a history minor. She is the author of A Most Inconvenient Marriage, Sixty Acres and a Bride, and Caught in the Middle, and contributed a novella to A Match Made in Texas. Regina has worked at the Mustang News and First Baptist Church of Mustang, along with time at the Oklahoma National Stockyards and various livestock shows. She now lives outside Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with her husband and four children.

Connect with Regina: website, Twitter, Facebook

I received a free copy of this book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.

For sixty years, a wedding chapel sat silent, waiting for love. But times have changed and the hour has come when it just might be too late.

Retired hall-of-fame football coach Jimmy “Coach” Westbrook never imagined anything would come of his labor of love—the wedding chapel he built for Collette Greer, the woman he fell for back in ’49. But now an offer has come to turn the chapel into what it was meant to be—a place for love—and Jimmy sees no reason to hang onto his dream any longer.

Photographer Taylor Branson is trying to make a life for herself in New York. Leaving her hometown of Heart’s Bend, Tennessee, she put a lot of things behind her, including her family’s abysmal marriage rate. But love surprises her when she falls head-over-heels for Jack Forester, a top ad man. Their whirlwind romance results in an elopement, and a mountain of doubt. Jack, while genuine in his love for Taylor, can never seem to overcome his own demons to find the words of his heart.

When Taylor takes an assignment in Heart’s Bend, the job does more than send her back to her hometown, but into a world of family secrets buried beneath the sands of time.

When Taylor’s journey intersects with Coach’s, they rediscover the heartbeat of their dreams and that the love they long to hold is right in front of them. And worth every waiting moment.

Rachel Hauck rules the field of romance writing.  She is one of the few writers whose books I could pick up at any time and read over and over again, no matter my mood or external circumstances.  In fact, I don’t just reread them, but I’m ready to flip back to the beginning immediately upon reading the final words.  They’re that good – I’m never ready to leave the characters.

The characters themselves are one of the reasons why.  Hauck writes amazingly loveable characters with big, glaring flaws – and that’s precisely why I like them so much.  They may be externally beautiful, but they don’t have it all together, and neither do I.  Their problems with love, family situations, and faith journeys are ones that I can relate to.  I understand them and their problems, and since they all seem to have a bit of the friend-next-door quality to them, I feel a part of their lives.  I feel as if I know them, and that makes the story all the more exciting.

Another reason Hauck always comes out on top is her writing style.  She’s smooth, concise, and vivid.  Her word choice always paints brilliant pictures in my mind so that I can literally see the scene as if I were really there.  She brings emotions to life and plumbs the depths of love, despair, and joy as no other writer does.  I love the way that her books span decades to tell a story that’s years in the making.  She makes me think about the spiritual lessons the characters learn and the analogies that the book events make for character traits and life events.  I hate to put them down.

What really puts Hauck on top, though, is the way that she wraps all of these traits up in a romantic story.  I think romance stories can be dangerous because they can inadvertently cause us to expect our husbands or boyfriends to behave in the same romantic, awesome ways as those leading book men – and no man can live up to those imaginary standards.  Hauck’s books aren’t like those others, though.  I think it’s because her characters and her stories are so compellingly authentic.  They’re really flawed – not like having an extra five pounds but like being bitter and heartbroken – and they make big mistakes in the love arena, too.  Ones that are bigger than the I-don’t-wanna-be-with-her scenario that are featured in many books.  These big, lasting-for-decades problems seem real.  The characters seem real.  Their situations are real, and because these people don’t seem like poster people for love, I can read them without worrying that I’ll push the romantic actions of the character onto my husband.

I realize that The Wedding Chapel just released, but I’m not ready to put it down.  I see more rereading of Hauck’s books in my near future ….

Click here to read other reviews in this bloggy hop or here to purchase your own copy now.

Rachel Hauck is an award-winning, best selling author of critically acclaimed novels such as The Wedding Dress, Love Starts with Elle, and Once Upon A Prince. She also penned the Songbird Novels with multi-platinum recording artist, Sara Evans. Booklist named their novel, Softly and Tenderly, one of 2011 Top Ten Inspirationals. She serves on the Executive Board for American Christian Fiction Writers and is a mentor and book therapist at My Book Therapy, and conference speaker. Rachel lives in central Florida with her husband and pets.

Connect with Rachel: website, Twitter, Facebook

I received a free copy of this book from LitFuse Publicity in exchange for an honest review.