Fantastic novel as always by Colleen Coble. Absolutely brilliant, easy to ready story as always! Highly recommend to others.

Bessie is married by to a man she has never seen before. And without her knowing she is even married - as this setup is the doing of her irresponsible younger sister! Yet, she is willing to give this marriage a chance, as she longs for her own family.

This is going to be very frank and blunt review.

This is one of the earliest works of the author and it shows. To be embarrassingly honest here - the premise is highly immature and it highlight some very troubling settings and behaviour. Like young girl having a huge inferiority complex (because she is constantly compared to her more beautiful sister), so she believes that being "spinster" is her fate and that her only chance for a family is to proceed with a false marriage - instead of confronting her younger sister with her immature lies in leading the unsuspecting man just for a foolish fun (said younger sister never has to face any consequences and is never ashamed of putting her own sister down because of being older than her and less beautiful). What about building Bessie's character to let her see that she is loved by God the way she is, single or married? What about confronting Bessie's cold family in showing them the same? And what about Jasper willing to stay in a marriage just for the sake of not offending Bessie in sending her packing? This simply de-values any honesty and sanctity of the marriage. What if this marriage simply would not work??? Sure, Jasper is written a a blandly, one-dimensional ideal Christian man without any faults, but the life simply does not work like that ands promoting this naivete, Christian or not, is wrong. I suppose that the authoress based this work on the Biblical story of Leah/Rachel - but the Bible shows the wrongs in this setup, also!

But I am happy to say that the authoress nowadays writes much more complex and interesting novels, where she addresses the issues maturely and wisely. I like her current works. I guess everyone has to start somewhere and move upward from that point.

First of all, I love inspirational historical fiction! Second of all, I've only read Colleen's suspense novels, going back in time, so to speak, with this book was a real treat. I think she's one of those authors who could write in any genre. Thirdly, I really enjoy a good marriage-of-convenience or mail-order bride story & ‘To Love a Stranger” is a marriage-by-proxy story; one I've never heard of. I can see where it may have been more common in this time period, especially when women far out-numbered men.

Ah yes, sisters! Growing up with one can be one of the greatest joys & sometimes even the greatest sibling rivalry around. Lenore is the younger sister of Bessie Randall, our herione in this book. She hatches a plan to correspond with Jasper Mendenhall, a military man, in Bessie's name. As if that weren't bad enough, she signed a marriage certificate and agreed to join him out west....all without Bessie's knowledge! But of course she finds out and feels obligated to go through with it, if only to straighten the mistake out. Finally upon meeting Jasper, decides maybe this was what God had planned all along for her. Can these two form a real marriage, or will Lenore's deceit be too much for them to overcome?

I really like the adventure Coble took me on; from that first meet to final chapter, she kept me turning pages because I had to find out what happened next. Being a hopeless romantic, I loved watching Bessie & Jasper fall in love and face each obstacle that came their way head-on. The faith theme was refreshing; God was very much in the center to help guide them. I also loved that Coble referenced 1 Corinthians 13—the love chapter—because that is the scripture God gave my husband & I when we were first married. It's the perfect model for how marriage should be between two people! It was a real pleasure watching these two want to reflect that scripture in their own relationship.

This was a very enjoyable story that I would recommend to inspirational historical readers who are hopeless romantics like myself!

*I received a complimentary digital copy via Netgalley and was under no obligation to leave a favorable review. *

Good read. Interesting and entertaining story and characters. Like reading perspectives on events from history. Entertaining read on the journey to romance and love.

This book has 2 different covers. The print version has a very nice cover. The digital edition has a very generic, second rate cover that looks like a second grader made it while playing around with dad's computer.

Okay this was written by Colleen Coble. She has not written many books I don't like. Not much else to say.

This author is an auto-read for me and many of my patrons.