Review: Too Rich For A Bride by Mona Hodgson

From the Publisher:
With a head more suited to bookkeeping than a bridal veil, Ida’s dreams include big business- not beaus.

Ida Sinclair has joined her sisters, Kat and Nell, in the untamed mining town of Cripple Creek, Colorado for one reason: to work for the infamous but undeniably successful businesswoman, Mollie O’Bryan. Ida’s sisters may be interested in making a match for their determined older sister, but Ida only wants to build her career.

Under Mollie's tutelage, Ida learns how to play the stock market and revels in her promising accomplishments. Fighting for respect in a man's world, her ambition leaves little room for distractions. She ignores her family's reservations about Mollie O'Bryan's business practices, but no matter how she tries, she can't ignore the two men pursuing her affections—Colin Wagner, the dashing lawyer, and Tucker Raines, the traveling preacher.

Ida wants a career more than anything else, so she shrugs off the suitors and pointed “suggestions” that young ladies don’t belong in business. Will it take unexpected love—or unexpected danger—for Ida to realize where her priorities truly lie?

My Thoughts:

'Too Rich for a Bride' by Mona Hodgson is book number 2 in the Sinclair Sisters of Cripple Creek series. Before receiving the book, I was unaware that this was a sequel, but thankfully, even without reading the first book, I was able to follow the story and it stood on it's own very well. In this story, we meet Ida, a woman living in 1896 who had more desire to be involved in business and make her own money than to find love and be married, as was the norm for women in this time frame. She moves to the town of Cripple Creek to be near her sisters and in hopes of working with a successful business woman by the name of Mollie O Bryan. Along the way, she meets a traveling preacher Tucker Raines and a successful lawyer Colin Wagner and has to question what it is she believed she wanted more than anything.
I have to admit, I do not typically enjoy historical fiction, so please keep that in mind when reading my review. For that reason, I did have a bit of a hard time initially getting into the book and it seemed to move quite slow at first. But the more I read, the more I was drawn in and related to the characters and in the end fount it quite enjoyable. The characters were believable and despite the different time in which they were living, they went through many similar struggles as we might see today. In a society today where women are not uncommon in business and high powered jobs, there is still often an internal battle between having a family or pursuing these career goals, much like Ida's own struggles. The story was timeless and a few times I did find myself forgetting when this was supposed to have taken place. While I wouldn't place this on my must read list, I'm certainly happy with it, and am glad I decided to give it a chance. If you like historical romance, you will probably enjoy this book even more than I did.

You can read more and purchase this book here!

*I received a copy of this book free from Waterbrook Multnomah in exchange for my honest review. All thoughts are my own.

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