Heart of Stone: A Heart Wish Mail Order Bride Novel Heart of Stone: A Heart Wish Mail Order Bride Novel
Old West/Time Travel/Romance
Firehouse Publishing
May 7, 2021
132
Caitlyn Larrabee was a modern woman before she died. Now she's an angel in waiting. Offered a chance to have a happy life back on Earth if she can answer a deserving man’s Heart Wish, she agrees to travel back in time to meet the man who needs her as much as she needs him. Of course, there are rules. She has just seven days to get Lucas Ramsey, a bonafide cowboy, to fall in love with her. And she can’t tell anyone, especially her new husband, that she’s an angel. On top of all that, she must avoid, at all costs, the Angel Hunters that will be stalking her -- or risk losing not only her angel powers, but Lucas. Breaking horses for the Army and running cattle on a ranch doesn't keep the darkness at bay for Lucas Ramsey. He's ready to start over. Try again after losing his wife and children to influenza six years ago. So he sends for a mail-order bride. When Lucas meets Caitlyn he knows she’s special but he can’t put his finger on why. She’s beautiful, yes, but it’s more than that. Little does he know that her time is limited. When he realizes her very life is in danger, he will do whatever it takes to save her. They may find true love and their happily ever after, but not without sacrifice. Courage. And a love so powerful even a Heart of Stone will beat again.
Reviewed by Linda Tonis
Member of the Paranormal Romance Guild Review Team
I love Ms. Woolf’s mail-order bride series but now I have a whole new take on them. I have often reviewed her books and stated that I loved visiting the old West but definitely would never want to live then and now we have a story of a modern woman from 2020 waiting in Purgatory for her wings but being sent back to 1880 Golden, Colorado to become a mail-order bride.
Caitlyn Larrabee was not happy to return to Earth, a place where she suffered pain at the hands of her husband who eventually beat her to death, sending her to Purgatory. Now she is told that she has one week to get Lucas Ramsey a rancher to love her without revealing who she really is. If successful she will remain on Earth with her new husband and if she fails will remain in Purgatory forever. In addition to having to be a bride with fear that she will face the same pain she did with her ex she has to evade Angel Hunters whose sole purpose is stealing an angel’s powers.
It has been six long years since Lucas Ramsey lost his wife and two small sons to influenza. After years of burying himself in a bottle he pulled himself out bringing the ranch back to a success and finally deciding he wanted a wife and a family. Gabriel heard his heart wish and sent Caitlyn a woman without a clue of surviving without modern conveniences, no cell phone, no bathroom with running water growing up without these perks is not a problem since you don’t know any difference but having known all these things and suddenly having to milk a cow when you never saw one up close and in person is scary.
It only took Caitlyn one day to realize that she loved Lucas; he was everything she could have hoped for but as much as he seemed to care for her, he never uttered the magic words “I love you” and time was running out. It didn’t take long before an Angel Hunter appeared and she knew it not by looks but by the extreme head pain she suffered when one was near and one was very close. Protecting Lucas and the others at the ranch was her primary concern and she would use the one power Gabriel gave her to destroy those that threatened all that she held dear.
I loved this book just as much as all the others I have read and watching as Caitlyn tried to adjust to 1880 was quite a kick and I don’t know if I would have handled it quite as well. What happens I will not reveal, if Caitlyn gets to remain on Earth with the man she loves, if the Angel Hunters win in the end and if Purgatory is where she will spend eternity, I leave for you to discover. This was a book I read in one sitting and I look forward to more Heavenly mail order brides.