The Outlaw Takes A Bride ~ Susan Page Davis

• Print Length: 320 pages
• Publisher: Shiloh Run Press; Gld edition (March 1, 2015)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00PTHVE9K
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled 

Publication Date: March 1, 2015

Johnny Paynter flees Denver to escape being hanged for a murder he didn’t commit. At his brother’s ranch in Texas, where he thought he could take refuge, he finds his brother, Mark—dead. Taking advantage of his strong resemblance to his brother, Johnny assumes Mark’s identity. Soon Johnny discovers that Mark had been corresponding with a widow named Sally in St. Louis, and she’s en route to be a mail-order bride to Mark. Seeing no other option, Johnny makes a fateful decision to go through with the wedding, posing as his brother. But Sally has secrets she's hiding, too. How will a marriage survive with so much deception?

My take on this book:

The Outlaw Takes A Bride is like a mail order bride story on steroids! As someone who reads this genre regularly I found Susan Page Davis' plot to be refreshing because she didn't just follow the same old formula. Instead she provides a twisting, turning read where secrets and lies place some of the characters in unique situations, but more than that she also provides a bit of mystery, deception,danger, and moments of suspense blended together with a historical western setting to make for a plot that grabbed my attention and kept me reading! 

After the death of her husband Sally Golding decides to correspond with rancher Mark Paynter in Texas hoping for a new start at life. During their correspondence she has fallen in love with him, so when he asks her to marry him she quickly agrees. When she gets to Texas the man she meets doesn't seem like the warm open man she has come to know, but she chalks it up to him being shy and marries him anyway, hoping that he will eventually become the man she came to know and love in their correspondence. She has no idea that the man she marries may not be the person she thinks he is!

Talk about a mail order bride story with a twist! The Outlaw Takes A Bride by Susan Page Davis is filled with plenty of situations that kept me wondering what might happen next, but more than that I really didn't think that Johnny would marry Sally, and when he did I couldn't help but wonder where the story would go from there! The characters were very well developed and easy to like, even the bad guy had me fooled for a little while. I could easily empathize with Johnny and the predicament that he got himself in, he was carrying the guilt of the lies he told, along with grieving for his brother.   As his feelings developed for Sally he longed for her love but was certain she would hate him for his deceptions. The emotional issues that Sally and Johnny both were going thru created another layer to their complex story. Plenty of action kept the plot zipping along, from an outlaw gang, to the daily life on the ranch, the author creates a very enjoyable read. A good clean read that blends together a few faith based messages along with a different kind of mail order bride tale,along with a splash of suspense to make for a book that was hard to put down.

Reviewed for Readersfavorite.com