About this book:
“Determined to prove that cattle king Eli Dearing has no justification for evicting his stepmother and half brothers, Asher Ellis uses the cover of a fancy ball to break into the Three Cedars ranch house to search for proof of wrongdoing. On the verge of discovery, he flees, but a boy's cry compels him to make a daring rescue.
Spunky and independent, Samantha Dearing balks when she learns the ball her father is hosting in her honor is nothing more than a matrimonial ambush. Taking a break from her unwanted suitors, Samantha spots a thief fleeing her home. When the stranger ends up saving her brother's life, she hides the only clue to his identity left behind--his boot--and resolves to find him herself.
But when Samantha encounters the older brother of a student she tutors, all thoughts of the bootless mystery man vanish. And although Asher tries to keep his distance from Samantha for reasons of his own, a series of suspicious accidents befall her, and his protective instincts flare, no matter the cost to their future.”
Series: Book #2 in the “Texas Ever After” series. I did not finished the first book due to content and it seems like no characters from that book were mentioned in this one.
Spiritual Content- Psalm 118:9 at the beginning; Many Scriptures are read, remembered, thought over, quoted, mentioned, & discussed; Bible reading; Many Prayers & Thanking and Praising God (and a blessing over food); Talks about God, trusting Him, & His timing; 'H's are not capital when referring to God; Samantha wonders if her being a girl is “such a sin” that it would alter her father’s love/attention towards her; Samantha wonders why God would allow a tragedy to befall His faithful servants but a woman encourages her that there’s a reason and continues to trust God; Asher wonders why God allows disparity among His people in the way that everyone lives; An unwed mother believes God quit helping her when she let a man sweet-talk her into his bed, which Samantha disagrees with and voices; A few diary entries that have a woman upset with God not giving her a child, saying that another woman can be barren because God needs that woman’s time for His work (this thought it not corrected on page at all), & saying that God has failed her and believes He is withholding His blessing, *Major Spoilers* She took matters into her own hands after reading about Sarah (thinking that God did not curse Hagar and instead took pity on her and the child) and goes to have an affair for a year to be able to get pregnant; She eventually realizes that she rejected God’s plan for her own and asks for forgiveness; See Major Spoiler note in Sexual Content *End of Spoilers*; Many mentions of God, trusting Him, & His timing; Many mentions of prayers, praying, & blessings over food; Mentions of thanking & praising God and Jesus; Mentions of Bibles, Bible reading, & books of the Bible; Mentions of those & events in the Bible; Mentions of churches, church going, services, worship, sermons, & preachers/ministers; Mentions of callings & ministries; Mentions of blessings & being Blessed; Mentions of sins & partaking in sin; A few mentions of miracles; A few mentions of a birthmark being said to be where the angels kissed a child; A couple mentions of a pastor sensing a soul in need of salvation (& the person trying to leave the pastor’s presence as soon as possible); A mention of Providence; A mention of the pearly gates;
*Note: Other phrases such as “Good heavens” (x8), “Heavens” (x6), “Heaven knows…” (x4), and “For heaven’s sake” (x1) are all said; A fire being described as “a menacing demon stalking its prey”.
Negative Content- Minor cussing including: a ‘biddy’, a ‘good grief’, a ‘thunderation’, two ‘shut up’s, two ‘stupid’s, and six ‘shoot’s; A man calls Samantha a ‘cow’; Eye rolling & Sarcasm; Being shot at, being stalked, Being locked in a house on fire, a carriage accident, a rattlesnake being on the character, & shaking and crying after all of these near-death experiences (up to semi-detailed); Gunshots, being shot at, being held at gunpoint, fighting, being hit/attacked, injuries, pain, helping someone who was shot, seeing others shot and bleeding, & seeing someone else being held as hostage at gunpoint (*Spoiler* a twelve-year-old boy on the last one *End of Spoiler*, semi-detailed); Saving someone from drowning (up to semi-detailed); At the very beginning, Asher trespasses into the Dearing home during a party to gain information that could possibly lead to blackmail (Asher thinks of his plan as just); A drunk man threatens & grabs at Samantha (Asher threats the man with broken bones, up to semi-detailed); Asher threatens a man who means harm to Samantha & wishes to beat another to a bloody pulp for harming her; Mentions of someone nearly drowning & other near-death experiences (a carriage accident, a run in with a rattlesnake, & being locked in a house on fire, up to semi-detailed); Mentions of deaths, deaths of loved ones, & grief (for a wife, a mother, & both parents, barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of injuries, blood/bleeding, pain, & possible deaths (up to semi-detailed); Mentions of gunfire, shooting/shooting at someone; Mentions of thieves, stealing, trespassing, break-ins, jails/prisons, crimes, criminals, & possible hanging; Mentions of fires, arson, being locked in a house on fire, smoke, passing out, & injuries (barely-above-not-detailed); Mentions of a man grabbing at a woman & pulling her into an alley; Mentions of a young boy being slapped/hit for his mouthy comments to an adult; Mentions of a father kicking his daughter out of the house due to her being an unwed mother (she wonders if she’ll have to give up her son despite it being like ripping out her heart); Mentions of alcohol, drinking, a drunk, & saloons; Mentions of lies, lying, & liars; Mentions of hatred; A few mentions of poison, someone who was murdered with poison, & a plan to do it to another; A few mentions of nightmares; A few mentions of gossip & rumors; A few mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of a dead body; A couple mentions of blackmail; A couple mentions of gambling & poker; A couple mentions of eavesdropping; A couple mentions of cigarettes & tobacco; A mention of a chamber pot;
*Note: Samantha & her father have a strained relationship due to her believing that he doesn’t care about her well-being because he sent her away & her late mother’s comments that implied that Samantha wasn’t enough (we quickly learn that this is not the case and see their relationship improve, albeit still having Samantha’s past hurts because of his actions and believing that he had no use for a daughter; She wonders if her prejudices and bitterness are clouding her thoughts towards him and still works for forgiveness towards him, up to semi-detailed on her emotions and feelings); Samantha becomes interested in a trespasser because that means the man wasn’t afraid to defy her father (a tiny rebellious part of her thinks this) & that she would like to best her father at finding out about the trespasser; A few mentions of the women’s suffrage movement & wanting to be equal; A couple mentions of a character’s “true” father (biological); A mention of a struggling with infertility feeling “darkness” descend over her.
Sexual Content- A hand kiss, two forehead kisses (one that arouses feelings), a cheek kiss, a border-line barely-above-not-detailed // semi-detailed kiss, and three semi-detailed kisses; Remembering kisses (up to semi-detailed); Touches, Embraces, Warmth, Butterflies/Tingles, & Nearness (up to semi-detailed); Remembering touches, embraces, & nearness (up to semi-detailed); Wanting to touch & embrace (up to semi-detailed); Noticing (barely-above-not-detailed); Blushes; a ‘harlot’ and a ‘hussy’; Samantha has romantic daydreams of Asher after he rescues her; Asher panics when he sees Samantha messing with her skirt in a way that could imply she’s disrobing (mentioning Lady Godiva and they are both very embarrassed by it; she was adjusting her skirt, not taking it off); *Major Spoiler but Important Content Note (Affairs and Infertility)* Samantha receives her late mother’s diary and reads the entries of her mother being upset with God (believing He cursed her) for not letting her get pregnant, saying that God might want her pastor’s-wife-sister to be barren to have more time to do His work but there’s nothing gained by her infertility, saying that God failed her by her giving birth to a girl who is “of no value” (Samantha, but does start to soft her heart towards her in later entries), and feels “darkness” descending over her; She took matters into her own hands after reading about Hagar and Sarah & since she knows her husband won’t welcome another woman into his bed, she plans to have an affair as it could be her husband having the barrenness (despite a doctor not admitting the fault might lie with men); She views it as a business transaction comparing it to bulls and cattle, adding that there will be no love as she needs his “seed”; She tells herself that she is doing it for her husband, but her conscience doesn’t recognize the “nobility” of her quest; After the first time, she feels soiled about a man who is not her husband touching her and thinks that she betrayed her husband, asking for God to forgive her; To use her guilt, she eagerly welcomes her husband into her bed, but continues the affair for a year in hopes of finally getting pregnant (which she does and guilt eats at her conscience, saying that the end results justifies whatever it took, but knows it’s a lie as she rejected God’s plan for her own); When Samantha tells Asher about it, she calls it not being a love affair, but more like a “breeding opportunity” and tells her father it had no emotional attachment and “strictly a breeding exercise” *End of Major Spoilers*; Mentions of affairs & illegitimate children; Mentions of a man getting a woman to his bed, her getting pregnant, the man not accepting the child as his and will not marry the woman (who is going to get kicked out of her family’s home because of it), & him seducing and bedding other women (he accuses the mother of the baby of rolling “around in the hay” with other men and says she ruined herself, not taking any responsibilities for the child; She considers herself tarnished because of it and believes God quit helping her when she let the man sweet-talk her into his bed, which Samantha disagrees with; *Spoiler* This is Samantha’s good friend and Samantha refuses to minimize that the man was an equal participant of the consequences of the sin, perhaps even the instigator of it; She gets very upset and tells her father that it is his problem as well because “the older and wiser men of our society turn a blind eye to the bad behavior of their young proteges” so nothing will stop this from happening again; She angrily asks why that when “a man and woman have relations outside of marriage, the woman is considered to be a harlot, but the man is simply ‘sowing his wild oats’? ...when the man is equally responsible for the child’s existence?”; Her father agrees that it’s unfair for the woman, but also the “truth that she chose to give herself to a man not her husband” and Samantha brings up about the woman in the woman who was being stoned for adultery and assuming that the man was covered for by other men *End of Spoiler*); Mentions of a man’s womanizing ways, bragging about a “love shack”, & him taking multiple different women there for years (Samantha’s younger brother knows about the love shack and how babies are made due to breeding cattle & she is horrified by knowing that he knows about such things); Mentions of kisses & kissing; Mentions of flirting & flirts; A few mentions of the women who work at saloons & men paying to meet them in a place to be alone; A few mentions of jealousy; A couple mentions of a man being caught while engaged with a woman in “unsanctioned behavior”; A mention of some men seeking “female companionship” (implied to be more than just talking); A mention of a loose woman; A mention of a man’s roguish gaze towards women; A mention of a woman possibly being assaulted by Asher (he wonders if someone thinks he would do this, but he wouldn’t); Love, falling in love, & the emotions;
*Note: Samantha, after being forced into a mothering role at a young age and her dreams being freedom and independence from familial responsibilities, now wonders about holding a baby of her own; Mentions of woman being barren (Samantha assumes that her aunt mourned the loss of not having children and wonders how she and her husband let go of that pain with no resentment towards God; Also heavy mentioned in the Major Spoiler section above); A few mentions of a woman’s monthly bleeding; A few mentions of men having to strip down to their underwear under an officer’s orders (looking for a criminal).
-Samantha Dearing, age 19
-Asher Ellis
P.O.V. switches between them
Set in 1889
368 pages
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Pre Teens-
New Teens-
Early High School Teens-
Older High School Teens-
My personal Rating-
{Trigger warning: Affairs, Infertility, & mentions of sexual assault from manipulation}
Despite not finishing the first book in this series due to content, I was still curious about this book because of it being a light (and reverse) Cinderella retelling. Our male lead is the Cinderella (but with a good stepfamily) and our female lead is the princess. I really liked the family aspect of both main characters and loved seeing their brothers.
Here’s the thing: fairytale retellings are a genre I typically expect to be lighter in terms of content. Sure, the originals are yikes and often disgusting to say the least, but most retellings—at least in the Christian Fiction realm—are light. Not much to note in the way of content. This series hasn’t been that way at all. In this book particularly, I am incredibly disappointed in how heavy that twist in this story is weighing on my heart.
I often figure out the twists in books. My mom is convinced it’s because I read so much that there’s nothing left to surprise me with. It could be that or it could be the fact that my brain goes ninety to nothing when reading and is always trying to figure out what’s going to happen. With this book though, I started to get frustrated that Samantha couldn’t see who the culprit was. It felt incredibly obvious to me and I wanted to smack her over the head with the knowledge. Especially after she learned Very Important Information towards the end of the book. The beginning of the book was very cute and yet it also felt slow paced, I was just waiting for a shoe to drop (no Cinderella pun intended) and when that “surprise” entered in, I knew it was the proverbial shoe.
I was greatly enjoying this book until the last quarter or so which entered in content that dramatically affected these ratings. I won’t say much here, but the details of it is listed in the Sexual Content part of this review. It does have to do with a wife planning an affair, it being treated as a business transaction, and illegitimate children. (Also the woman having messed-up theology.) I unfortunately saw this coming on the horizon it was very disappointing to see that my thoughts were correct. It’s such a bummer because the romance between our main couple was so cute and there was a really good faith content, but that content is just not sitting well with me along with a man who seduced a woman into going to bed with him.
I’ve been sitting here, typing these final thoughts and staring at my screen for over fifteen minutes now, trying to gather my thoughts. This book is not recommended for ages 9-19, the target ages of BFCG. Each reader will obviously decide for themself and I will not be the one to tell you “no, don’t read this book.” I will never say that because my job is to give the information of what’s in the book, the content found within. Yes, I am above the age range of 9-19. I could give it a two star rating, which I’ve been debating as I stare at my computer screen. Because I did like their romance (there wasn’t even that much noticing!) and the faith content. But that just doesn’t feel right to me. I feel weighed down and heavy from the twist this book had and while the ending ends in a hopeful note, there’s still lingering sadness to me. I can’t in good conscience give this book a higher rating because of the content, despite the majority (not all) of the first half being enjoyable because by the end of the book, I didn’t like it. Which is terribly sad and disappointing.
See y’all on Friday with a new review!
*BFCG may (Read the review to see) recommend this book by this author. It does not mean I recommend all the books by this author.
