Friday, October 19, 2012

Train Station Bride by Holly Bush - Virtual Review tour and Giveaway


(Full length historical romance)


This review is done in conjunction with the author's virtual tour with Goddess Fish Promotions. The author will be awarding a $25 Amazon GC to a randomly drawn commenter during the tour, so comment today AND follow the tour (if you click on the tour banner above, it'll take you to a list of his tour stops) -- the more you read and comment, the better your odds of winning. You could be introduced to a great new author AND win a fun prize!



1887 ... Julia Crawford, Boston debutante, corresponds with an aging shopkeeper and travels to North Dakota to marry him, hoping to escape the ridicule she endures as the plump, silly daughter of one of Boston’s premiere families. What happens when the train station groom is not who Julia bargained for? Will her secrets keep her from love and acceptance? Or will Julia’s love be strong enough to conquer her past and give her the future she’s always dreamed of?



This story had me hooked in the first paragraph. We meet our heroine, Julia, a poor little fat girl, with a domineering mother and three beautiful sisters. That was only the beginning and not totally true.

Sneaking out to catch a train to South Dakota late one night, she was on her way to marry someone she had been corresponding with, but had never met. Things didn’t work out quite the way she had planned however, and when she got off the train and found a man waiting to marry her, along with the preacher to do it right away, she went along with the plan. Unfortunately, this was not the man she had been writing to, but they were now married and stuck. The story gets more and more complicated as it goes on and becomes far more than the simple romance I'd expected.

She has many secrets and gradually tells her husband some of them. But not all of them. I can’t go into any more details, because I don’t want to ruin this story for you. However, believe me when I say this story kept me on the edge of my seat from the beginning to the end. There were so many complications and things that happened very unexpectedly, that I couldn’t wait to read the ending.

I picked this up to read a few pages before I went to bed and couldn’t put it down until I turned the last page. This is really one of the best stories I have read in a long time.

4.5 / 5 Flowers - This was a very good book!

Holly Bush was born in western Pennsylvania to two avid readers. There was not a room in her home that did not hold a full bookcase. She worked in the hospitality industry, owning a restaurant for twenty years and recently worked as the sales and marketing director in the hospitality/tourism industry and is credited with building traffic to capacity for a local farm tour, bringing guests from twenty-two states, booked two years out. Holly has been a marketing consultant to start-up businesses and has done public speaking on the subject.

Holly has been writing all of her life and is a voracious reader of a wide variety of fiction and non-fiction, particularly political and historical works. She has written four romance novels, all set in the U.S. West in the mid 1800’s. She frequently attends writing conferences, and has always been a member of a writer’s group.

Holly is a gardener, a news junkie, and vice-president of her local library board and loves to spend time near the ocean. She is the proud mother of two daughters and the wife of a man more than a few years her junior.

Links: www.hollybushbooks.com
Twitter - @hollybushbooks
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Holly-Bush/247399131941435

7 comments:

  1. I love a book that grabs you right from the start. It delivers on it's promises.

    marypres(AT)gmail(DOT)com

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  2. Good Morning and thanks for having me at It's Raining Books. Hello Mary!

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  3. What a great review. This sounds like an exceptionally good story. It is in the time era I love to read about too.

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  4. I loved reading Train Station Bride - Holly Bush not only writes an entertaining story, she also has a beautiful writing style that flows. I'd recommend this book to all historical romance readers. :)

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  5. Great review, I'm looking forward to reading Train Station Bride.

    Kit3247(at)aol(dot)com

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  6. Like your own husband,is Julia's husband "more than a few years her junior"? I like that way of phrasing it. I hope that you are blissfully happy...and without the drama of so many romance novels!
    catherinelee100 at gmail dot com

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    1. Catherine Lee,

      My husband is a few years my junior but Julia's isn't. Olive, however, spinster librarian in my book Romancing Olive, is quite a few years younger than hunky farmer Jacob. I like to think Olive is as happy as I am!

      Holly

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So... inquiring minds want to know: what do you think?