I am a member of the American Library Association Reading List Award Committee. This title was suggested for the 2021 list. It was not nominated for the award. The complete list of winners and shortlisted titles is at <a href="https://rusaupdate.org/2021/02/2021-reading-list-years-best-in-genre-fiction-for-adult-readers/">

The story has moments of tension and horrible fights, in general it has everything usual in this type of stories if we take as reference any classic movie of the genre. It has entertained me but there is still room for more

This story was set in the period of the 1850s. I generally look forward to any historical-based novel so when I read the synopsis for this particular book, I was eager to read it. Unfortunately, I was disappointed.

I had a hard time following the story. It was all over the place. Austin, the main character, is a transgender woman who sees herself as a man. The story is told through her eyes. Regrettably, because of the numerous flashbacks, I had a difficult time transitioning from scene to scene. In addition, I am not sure if this is a love story, western, transgender coming out, or what. Although there are cowboys, gun fights, Indians, and a slight touch of romance, readers might find this book to be difficult to appreciate.

I found the author’s writing difficult to read. Her choice of words was frequently awkward and lead me to believe that she is from another country. I learned that she is knowledgeable in equine behavior. The author explains equine terminology throughout the book, thus giving it an interesting flavor.

The Mail Order Bride is more of a western than a romance! Actually, if you blink, you will miss the romance. I gave the book 2 stars out of 5.

I received this ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

I won't recap the blurb, too many others have done that, you don't need me to repeat their words. I will tell you this though, this is a brilliant book that meets every convention of Western fiction, but then goes far beyond. There are a couple of fascinating sub-plots that really added to my overall enjoyment of the book. The characters are all unique and memorable, and there seem to be more bad guys than good. A couple of them don't make their allegiances clear right away, and we're left wondering whose side they're on. At times, it seemed like the townsfolk hated Austin, and then they didn't, then did...so we're left guessing. And there are twists! Twists written so well that they seemed to make perfect sense.
Now, I know a thing or three about the old muzzle-loaders. I know how to load a flintlock, and a percussion-cap, and I know first-hand how heavy Two-Feather's Hawken is. So I can tell you that the author knows their stuff when they write about the guns in this novel.

Yes, there are a couple of places that the book stumbles into a speed-bump, but overall, the pacing is great. This is a debut, and it's not going to be perfect. it's hard to write a book, y'all. But ignore those speedbumps and let yourself get sucked into the story.

I loved every moment of this book. It's going to the top of my read-this-one-over-and-over-again pile.
Thank you to the author for writing the best Western I've read in years. Thank you to Bold Strokes for taking a chance on a Western and letting transgender folks see themselves represented. (And the cover artist needs a raise!) Thank you for letting me read such a great book in exchange for me gushing about it.

Did I mention I loved this book?

The Mail Order Bride by R. Kent is a very enjoyable action/adventure novel. I picked this book because I love historical fiction, and especially the ones set in the Old West.

The title and even the blurb, to some extent gives the impression that this is a major romance. It is not. There is a little romance mostly in the second half of the story, but this book is a true action/adventure western.
The tale tells the story of Austin. Austin lives his life as a young man even though he has a woman’s body. This is a secret very few people know, and if some in the town of Molasses Pond were to find out this secret, Austin could be in a world of trouble. When some of the many criminal elements in the town pay for a mail order bride for Austin, his troubles increase ten fold. He can’t leave his “bride”, Sahara Miller in town because she would be easy prey for the many bad guys there. Taking Sahara to his claim, though, puts Austin in danger of having his secrets exposed. The criminals in town also will follow them because they mean to have Sahara for themselves. Thus begins a true adventure that doesn’t stop until the last page.

I believe this is R. Kent’s debut novel, and this is a pretty good first try. There are some rough spots in the story, and a few glitches here and there, but I became so involved in the story itself, that they hardly bothered me at all. Most of the glitches seemed to happen around the transitions from one scene to another, but only in a few places. The setting is well described, and the characters are also well-developed. I became invested in both the story and the characters, and enjoyed reading this book until the end. I will be glad to read future novels by R. Kent, and look forward to more from this author.

I received an ARC from NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for an honest review.

Rainbow Reflections: http://rainbowreflections.home.blog/

The book starts good, being exciting and entertaining but then the amount of fights just seemed without reason and it got a bit boring. You got the sense of a wild wet theme but this got lost along the way.

This book was a bit all over the place. There is time jumping between past and present and it was very confusing.This made it and to follow and to get into the story.

This ARC was provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

I enjoyed reading this book. However, after reading the blurb, this book was not what I expected it to be. My expectation was one of a slow-burn western romance novel, what I got was a raw western with intrigue and a tiny string of romance (which was very slow-burn). So when you're not looking for a book that's heavy on the romance, this is a nice change of scenery. When reading western (I don't often) I often see authors romanticising the way of living. Off course it's though out in the west as a pioneer, but never that confronting. In this book, the raw edges showed and I liked that.

Both MC's, Austin and Sahara, are about 17 years old. At first, I was surprised at the level of adultness both showed. In this surprise, I was projecting my present-day perspective of adolescents too much. In those days you grew up much faster than nowadays, so their level of adultness didn't bother me. Austin is a quit person and Sahara the opposite. Austin keeps annoying themselves about this characteristic of Sahara right until the end of the book. I could appreciate that bit of realism by the author: you can become to love someone and still be annoyed by certain trades in the stage of falling in love.
What did bother me a little in this book was the lack of decisiveness of Austin. Would that be a stronger trade of Austin then the book could have been at least ten percent shorter? Also because of this lack of decisiveness, the stamina that Austin needed and seemed to possess was just through the roof, a little less believable.

The storyline was very surprising in the beginning and near the end. The people of Molasses Pond seemed to be more connected to each other than they realised. Also Austin and their biggest enemy Jack McKade. Boy did I hate that man and his following. A man with his tendencies would be in a mental facility nowadays. Who orders a mailorder bride just to be able to control someone and make someones live a living hell. Apparently, Jack McKade does.

When you love western I think you will also enjoy reading this story. The love for western and horses that the author seems to have is palpable in the words and lines throughout the book and makes the ride that much more enjoyable. If I have to rate this book I would want to rate it 3,5 stars because the story was good, there were feelings in there, but I didn't feel them that much. I do think that I would read another novel of this author because I'm curious for her other work after reading this book.

The Mail Order Bride by R. Kent

If I had known this would have lead characters that were teenagers I might not have requested to read and review this book. The premise sounded intriguing and as it was set in the 1800’s when being anything but heterosexual was taboo I wondered how the author would tackle the story. In the end the read was enjoyable if somewhat unbelievable at times.

What I liked:
* Austin: a 17 year old youth trying to become a good man even though it will not be easy. A past that has been lived with whites and with Indians makes for an intriguing belief system and code of ethics.
* Sahara: a mail order bride that was sent west to find a future. She had a lot to learn. I liked her strength and interest in bettering herself
* Two Feathers: an interesting friend to Austin. He was a reference to the two-natured found in some Indian cultures
* Justice and Rose – interesting addition to the story
* Kady the pup and the horses...horses had a hard time of it in the past
* That it wasn’t easy for everyone all of the time – there were real issues to deal with that were life and death at times.

What I didn’t like:
* Lightning Jack McKade: evil incarnate
* Lightning Jack’s hired guns: Jeb & Seth were easy to hate
* Lily: Lighning Jack’s daughter: didn’t fall far from the tree
* The evil men do and how it is so often motivated by greed

What I had trouble with:
* Austin’s stamina and strength seemed greater than it should have been for someone so small
* The adult-ness and maturity of Austin and Sahara
* The believability factor – I had trouble visualizing Austin being able to achieve so much, Sahara making the solo trip alone so young, the fight scenes and a few other things

Did I enjoy this book? Sort of
Would I read more by this author? Perhaps
Was the book what I thought it would be? Not really

Thank you to NetGalley and Bold Strokes Books for the ARC – This is my honest review.

3-4 Stars

Western with a young trans-man lead (also includes indigenous, two-spirit lore). Danger, action, gun fights and a desperate desire to survive... and maybe get some revenge. With a hard-won HEA to boot. This is a very different Western than you've probably read, but very good.

Austin is a young man, alone and scrambling to survive is the desert West. Born White but raised by The People (Navajo) after his wagon train was attacked, Austin is caught between cultures and in the cross-hairs of the town's maniacal king-maker. Things get infinitely more complicated for Austin when town roughs order him a mail-order bride - with the malicious intent of using her as a town whore. Austin doesn't feel able to take care of himself, much less this young woman, but he refuses to let her be taken and used.

This book is a classic western, with indians, half-breeds, a saloon, gunslingers, very bad guys. On some occasions it seemed as if we were within High Noon or Unforgiven.
And since I like to enjoy a good western, I liked this book a lot.

The romance part is very very diluted with the rest of the plot, which deals more with the survival of a woman, who considers herself a man inside, in a hostile and violent world.

The story is told from Austin's point of view and she has suffered innumerable misfortunes since childhood. These disgraces are explained to us little by little, as the story progresses, making everything more sense.

The mail order bride has a very secondary role and the interaction between her and Austin is scarce, although decisive.

The story has moments of tension and horrible fights, in general it has everything usual in this type of stories if we take as reference any classic movie of the genre. It has entertained me.

This was unfortunately not great. The story had promise—a transgender frontier man finds himself with an unwanted mail-order bride, whom he has to protect from the outlaws who run the town, even though he’d prefer to send her back east immediately—but the execution was convoluted. Rather than building to a central climax, things just keep happening of about the same intensity, like watching many back-to-back episodes of a serial western. I had a hard time following the plot, especially the gun battles. And the central relationship lacked depth.

This book was categorized on Netgalley as a romance, but it was 98% western. There is a love story but it’s not given much attention, and we only get Austin’s perspective.

I did enjoy the many horses in the book. I could tell that the author works with and loves horses, and some of them had more personality than the human characters.

Sahara arrives in Molasses pond, claiming to be Austin's mail order bride. But Austin's enemy, Lightning Jack McKade, his men, and the town all rebel against the idea. Austin has to fight to protect his new bride and in the process grows closer to her than he could have ever expected.

I really wanted to like this one as I love historical fiction. For the most part I think the historical fiction side of things was well written - but the actual plot of this book did not work for me. The style of writing and the plot made for a story that really had no moments to breathe. The writing was rambling, like Austin never took a breath. Plus, his narration would jump back and forth in time and it would get quite confusing. The plot also never seemed to stop, there was always something new and terrible happening, animals running away, fighting, etc...I kept wondering if the next scene would be the one where things would quiet down and we'd actually find out who the characters are. Even in action heavy books there needs to be moments between the chaos for the readers to be able to connect to the characters and the story. We're told Austin is falling for Sahara but we never really get to see that happen because everything is happening at breakneck speed. Reading this book was more exhausting than thrilling. The characters sounded really interesting and I would have loved to know more, there was a lot of potential.

I received an ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I gave up on this book about a third of the way through. It didn't grab me at all, which was disappointing because the blurb made the book sound pretty interesting. It seemed a little scattered. I'm sorry to leave unflattering feedback but I think this book needs some more work.

I seriously hate giving bad reviews. because I know how hard the Author Works to write the book and puts his or hers heart and soul into the book. .. but With that being said. . . This book did not work for me it was a hot mess. . i read the synopsis and loved it, and from the synopsis I expected western and lgbt romance. But this was all over the Place. It could not decide what it wanted to be. sometimes it was a western and voila a few page later it was romance and then it became a book about coming to terms on who you are or what you are. Would the book be better if it stuck to one genre--- probably.
The character Development was so lacking. the side characters became the main characters and vice versa.
But thank you to netgalley for this e book arc in Exchange for an honest review

I hate giving less than stellar reviews but this book did not work for me. I love westerns and romances and at first glance this book sounded like it was the one for me. Sadly, I was wrong. Where to start...

First, I felt the direction of the book was a bit all over the place. Did it want to be to be western romance, a western, a transgender romance western, a lesbian romance western, a coming to terms western, or just a western with all of that thrown in. The latter seems to be the best fit but then nothing was as defined as I would have liked it. It just tried to be too much.

Then there were some of the terms and language used that became annoying to me. For instance instead of Austin referring to his (I'm using the male pronoun because that's how Austin sees himself...I think) parents as ma and pa, occasionally he says White pa or White ma. I didn't understand it and I still don't. Though he was adopted by the Navajo Indians after what happened to his parents, the adjective just seemed wrong (and why was it capitalized?).

I also felt it lacked in real character development. The book focused so much on Jack McKade that I almost felt the book was really about him. Like the first three pages of the book talk only about this guy and some of it felt like a ramble.

There's more but the whole idea of the story was that they wanted Sahara, the mail order bride, to be the new prostitute in town. Now that's not a bad premise and it did show promise. Problem...um who was the current one? Why isn't the brothel more of a focal point in the story. We have three places in the book: the bar, the livery, and the hut or hovel or something. So the bar is the brothel. I get that but there is no real mention or insinuation of it being a brothel.

I absolutely hate leaving bad reviews. I almost never do. But if I was going to pay for this book I would have been very disappointed with the read I got out of it especially knowing it from Bold Strokes. If this were a kindle Unlimited read, I may have given it an extra star but for this it's 2 stars for me.

2.5 stars

Let me begin by saying this is not the typical genre I read, I was generously gifted this book through Netgalley, however I must have misunderstood the description. I did find the story interesting, a woman escaping he past hiding as a man, also attempting to hide who she is and where she along with her roots. Interesting time period late 1800’s and trying to settle in the west, the hardship of life at the time.

Just as I mentioned not my typical read, I felt it could use a little more editing and felt slow at times,

My rating coincided with genre as I did not enjoy it as much as I would have if it was a story I possibly picked deliberately