"Stowaway Bride" Delivers Romance and Adventure Good Enough To Hide In

Stowaway BrideTitle:  Stowaway Bride
Author:  Adrianne Wood
Format:  Print
Length:  336 pages
Publisher:  Pocket Books
Estimated Publication Date:  Nov. 26th, 2013
Rating:  5 stars

A steamy Western set in the Colorado badlands, featuring an heiress seeking adventure and a businessman looking for a saboteur.

Emily Highfill Grant is living the life most young women would envy: fashionable picnics on Boston Common, parties with eligible bachelors, and the wealth of her grandfather Charles Bertram Highfill assuring her a fine marriage. But what Emily wants more than anything is to go West—and break free of the cage her name and fortune have built for her. When her mother decides to travel to San Francisco, Emily sneaks aboard their private railcar, planning to surprise her once they’ve left the station. But Emily is the one who’s surprised: the railcar has been leased to Lucien Delatour, and she’s now traveling cross-country in a cozy private car with a handsome stranger.

Lucien Delatour hasn’t had it easy. Raised in an orphanage, Lucien built his hard-won fortune with sweat and determination. Now a saboteur’s deadly 

actions threaten to destroy the rail line that he and his business partner have spent a fortune to create. Racing west, Lucien is determined to prove that the saboteur is his old nemesis—Charles Bertram Highfill.

When Emily’s family sends agents to retrieve her, Lucien marries her to keep her safe. But when he finds out who her grandfather is, Lucien can’t help but feel betrayed…and soon he is torn between saving his railroad and saving his marriage.  -Goodreads


My Thoughts

Stowaway Bride may be a romance, but the real draw is the story!  Emily Highfill Grant is a sheltered Boston socialite, desperate to break free of the confines placed on her by family and station.  When a plan to stowaway on her mother's cross country train trip to San Fransisco has the unintended consequence of throwing her and her sister together with the darkly intriguing Lucien Delatour; she must use charm, wit, and her lightening fast intellect to make herself indispensable to her reluctant host, while keeping the identities of both young women secret.


Half the fun of this read lies in the fact that romance is clearly not its main focus.  In fact, it is only through a series of miscalculations on the part of our intrepid adventures, that they find themselves together at all.

Lucien Delatour is a self made man in the making.  That is of course if he can get out West in time to insure that the railroad that he and a partner are building is completed.
It is quite clear from the start that it is going to take more than a soft voice and a pretty face to pierce the steely armor  surrounding the heart of this railway man.

All Emily Highfill Grant wants to do is to have a little adventure before resigning herself to the teas, balls, and marriage to which a young lady of her station is bred to aspire.
What she gets is adventure, friendship, and so much more...in the form of one very formidable budding rail baron.

To add to all of the cat and mouse and banter shared between Emily and Lucien; there is the Emily's ever present vixen of a sister, Annabelle; the ever present threat of Emily's family secret; plot twists that drive Lucien and Emily closer in unbelievable ways and with even more jaw-dropping consequences; and revelations about both Lucien, his company, and his friends that not even the greatest psychic could see coming.

If you like your romance full of intelligence, wit, roguish gentlemen, and women with " backbone and pluck" to spare.  Stowaway Bride is just the book you'll want to hide in.


 



 

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