Review: A Bride’s Portrait of Dodge City, Kansas

It’s a less than picture-perfect romance. Will Addie and Miles discover there can be no secrets between them when love, lives, and laws are on the line?

It’s the late 1870s in the rough and tumble cowtown of Dodge City, Kansas. Addie Reid struggles to keep her photography studio, but her past association with an outlaw threatens her relationships, her business, and her life.

Deputy Miles Carr’s background also includes the outlaw gang, something he can’t find the courage to admit to his boss, the legendary Bat Masterson, until the lone survivor of the gang shows up and a murder occurs.

IMO: If you’re looking for fast-paced action in a western setting, A Bride’s Portrait of Dodge City, Kansas, is the one for you. The characters are likeable and the plot is entertaining.

The opening lines hooked me and led into a humorous scene involving Addie and her trouble with a cowboy’s best friend. It proved how serious she was at wanting her business to succeed.

Miles didn’t come across as the typical muscle-bound hero, but a nice guy you’d want in your corner when things turned sour. His hesitation in standing up for his new faith endeared him to me. I think we’re all that way at times.

In this book, best-selling author Erica Vetsch gives us two romances for the price of one. While Addie and Miles dance around their feelings for each other, both trying hard not to inform the other of their checkered pasts, their friends Fran Seaton and Jonas Spooner battle with their disparate goals. She wants romance and adventure. He wants to settle down with the woman he’s loved for years. I’m a sucker for a series, so I would have preferred to see this second romance in a book all its own. Though I enjoyed these characters, particularly the naive yet headstrong Fran, I think it took a little away from the story of Addie and Miles.

This was a romantic mystery, but the answer to “whodunit” wasn’t a big surprise. However, there is a revelation in the end that had me saying, “I didn’t see that coming.”

Even if romance and mystery aren’t enough, don’t tell me you can pass on a story where the legendary Bat Masterson plays a supporting role and the Long Branch Saloon of Gunsmoke fame is a fixture. 

Disclosure of Material Connection: This book came to me free from Barbour with the hope that I would mention it on this blog. There was no requirement for me to write a positive review and the opinions I have expressed above are my own. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.