Finally His Bride by Jody Hedlund Book Review
Finally His Bride by Jody Hedlund follows Willow, a woman making the trip to Vancouver Island from England in hopes to give her family a better future. What she doesn’t plan on, is her best friend Caleb tagging along on the journey. This book is set in the 1860s and is a spin-off series to Jody Hedlund’s Bride Ships.
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Finally His Bride
Author: Jody Hedlund
Pub. Date: Feb. 13, 2024
Series: Bride Ships: New Voyages book 1
Genre: Historical Romance
Pages: 286
Rating: 5 stars
Spice: none
Content Warnings: blood, abuse, death, & attempted kidnapping
Synopsis:
A new world. A new hope. An unexpected love.
What life awaits these brides?
With the cotton mills closed and hunger rampant in Manchester, England, Willow Rhodes’s family encourages her to join the bride ship bound for the Pacific Northwest, where she is assured of employment. Willow agrees to go with the hope that eventually she can save enough money for her family to join her.
Rebellious knuckle-boxing champion Caleb Edwards loves Willow more than life itself. But Willow has been adamant that she sees him as a friend and nothing more. Unable to watch her sail away, Caleb uses his prize money to pay for passage to Vancouver Island to be with Willow.
After arriving, Willow finds work as a maid and Caleb is a farmhand on the same property. As Caleb struggles to keep his feelings for Willow from growing, he’ll do anything for her, even take the blame for a theft to keep her safe. As the crime catches up to them, they’re forced to make choices that could finally rip them apart forever.
Book Review
Thank you to the author and Sunrise Publishing for the eARC of Finally His Bride by Jody Hedlund. All opinions are my own.
Jody Hedlund has quickly become one of my favorite authors because her books are just so easy to love. This book was no exception. I loved every bit of it.
Thoughts
One of the things that I love so much about Jody’s writing is that she is able to create romance scenes with so much sexual tension and chemistry without being crass or explicit. The romantic scenes in this book were so good, especially since the tension had been building for such a long time.
Childhood friends to lovers is one of my favorite tropes because of the pining, so watching Caleb and Willow change from best friends to lovers was so adorable, and it made me feel giddy. The friendship between Caleb and Willow was so sweet, and I loved reading Caleb’s poetry.
Before reading this book, I knew very little about Bride Ships, so the setting and historical background of the story was very interesting, and I’m excited to read more books about it.
Final Thoughts
I am looking forward to reading the next book in the series and reading Jody’s previous Bride Ships series because I just loved everything about this book.
I can’t recommend this book enough! Go read it and fall in love with these characters as much as I did.
Where to Read & Purchase
You can purchase a copy of this book at the following retailers:
Amazon [affiliate]
You can also find this book on:
Have you read Finally His Bride or any other books by Jody Hedlund?
I would love to hear your thoughts! Comment down below.