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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A goodun, June 14, 2005
This story starts with 19 year old Carrie Montgomery a pamperd princess in her own home. She's a beautiful girl who is the youngest and the only girl in her family of 6 older brothers who would die for her. During her summer Carrie and her friends get bored and decide to start a mail order bride business. One day Carrie walks in and finds one of her friends decides she is going to marry one of the men who sent his picture and asked for a hard working wife who could handle a farm. Carrie takes one look at the picture of Joshua Greene and falls in love with him and his two kids Tem and Dallas. She immediatly tells her friend to get lost becuase she is going to marry him. Carrie writes back to Joshua and makes up a horde of lies telling him how well she can cook and clean and work a farm. Joshua only wants whats best for his two kids, so he decides to send for her and marry her. He didn't even think it odd that Carry didn't want to have a wedding,she wanted to have a legal agreement marrige where you just sign the papers. Carrie knew her parents or her brothers for that matter would never let her get married to a man she's never met and that lives across the country. So she puts the legal aggrement into a stack of her father's papers and he doesn't even notice when he gives his consent. So she leaves and when she gets off the coach to the quaint little town Eternity with about 20 loads of her personal belongings she sees the handsomest man there. Instant sparks fly. They could barley keep their eyes off each other. When Carrie deducts that this irrisistable man is Mr. Johsua Greene she is delighted. When Josh finds out this petite, beautiful, pampered young lady is the wife he sent for, he's prepared to send her packing. Of course the coach won't leave again for another week. So in the meen time they are busy falling in love, she falls in love with the kids, and she fixes up their dirty old shack of a home, tragedy strikes, and Josh still won't admit his feelings to Carrie.
This little heart throb of a book will delight you're soul and leave you panting for more.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another memorable Deveraux effort!, March 26, 2006
What is it with Jude Deveraux that she writes such funny, entertaining and enthralling romances? I love Eternity! Even though this isn't my favorite of Deveraux novels, I read this novel in one sitting and wish it had been longer. The year is 1865. Carrie Montgomery is the youngest of several children. The baby girl in the family with seven overprotective, overbearing brothers, she is catered to her every whim and gets everything her heart desires. And that is why she makes an abrupt decision the moment she sees the photograph of a handsome, albeit lonely-looking man with his two unkempt children seeking a wife with farming experience at the desk of one of the employees at Carrie's mail-order bride business. So she marries him by proxy and travels from Maine to the small town of Eternity, Colorado, to be with him. Joshua Greene expects an ugly horse of a woman who will cook, clean, farm and cater to his children. Instead, he gets beautiful, dainty Carrie, with her expensive luggage and tiny lapdog. He isn't pleased with what he gets, but his attraction for her is automatic, and he keeps his distance from his new wife while she stays with them until the next stagecoach to Maine comes back in a week. He fears that he and his children will become too attached to her and will suffer when she gets bored with them and want to go back home. So he is mean to her. He is also secretive and doesn't allow Carrie to learn about his past. What he doesn't realize is that there is more to Carrie than meets the eye. And also Carrie realizes that there is something fishy about the handsome, hardworking and moody Josh. There are various twists throughout the novel.
I love how much depth these two characters have and how preconceived notions almost get in the way of their happiness. Josh has a kind of erronous, and sort of offensive, idea of what a woman is based on her looks, but that is understandable and kind of makes sense after I learned about his "dark secret." Deveraux leads the reader to believe that Carrie is a capricious airhead in the beginning, so it isn't just Josh's perception that is like that but the reader's as well, but as the story progresses, both the reader and Joshua realize that that isn't the case, that there is more to the petite heroine than being a spoiled heiress. And in turn there is more to Joshua than a struggling, incompetent farmer who cannot give his two children the life they deserve. I love Josh. He is tall, dark, sarcastic, brooding, vain, witty and gorgeous. He is now one of my favorite Deveraux heroes. His two children are adorable and wise beyond their years (though at times I felt that little girl Dallas was too articulate for a five-year-old). The characters are so well-woven, so wonderfully well developed that I couldn't help but smile when the novel ended. And the novel, like all Deveraux books I've read so far, is hilarious! I laughed from beginning to end. There is a reviewer here that did not get this novel at all when this person wrote that beautiful women in this novel are portrayed as lazy airheads while ugly women are portrayed as hard workers. This person missed the whole point of the story. Deveraux has such a great sense of humor that sounds satirical and quirky at times. No one should ever take her books too seriously. Anyway, 'Ring Montgomery from Mountain Laurel (and Carrie's older brother) appears in this novel. It was so nice to read about him in this book. I wish the author had written about Raleigh and Carrie's only sister as well (the latter of which wasn't mentioned in this novel at all, for some reason). There are so many wonderful Montgomerys left to write about and I hope Deveraux will use them for future novels. I hope she will go back to writing charming historicals like this one. Eternity is another great effort by Jude Deveraux and I cannot recommend this book enough.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Romance Lite, January 25, 1999
By A Customer
This is "whipped cream" romance--very lite, very little substance, and almost too sweet--depends on what you're in the mood for this week. Carrie Montgomery is the youngest sweetest daughter in a family of big hunking males who affectionately spoil her like her lap dog. She gives substance to her days by playing mail order matchmaker to post Civil War farmers who need brides out on the frontier. One day the photograph of Josh Greene and his two motherless children captures her attention so much that after a week of gazing and dreaming about the undeclared needs of this family (Josh's stated needs are for a superhuman farm wife/mother)--Carrie tricks her family and Josh into a wedding-by-proxy and is eventually on her way to her new husband and family. (Somehow her own parents don't protest this move or her actions.) Carrie arrives, baggage wagon full of Parisian dresses, to an understandably irate Josh Greene. Carrie immediately charms Josh's children, transforms Josh's shabby home into a storybook cottage (in a funny sequence involving the townspeople and a purse of gold coins), hires local women to compensate for her lack of knowledge of cooking and washing dishes--and doesn't understand why Josh is still stubbornly resistant to her other qualities. Josh has his own secrets, is as out-of-place in this small farming community as Carrie, and is unwilling to trust this pretty intruder. Carrie "proves" her "substance" in a rainy search on the mountain for a runaway child, and later by transforming the dying town into a mercantile center with her exclusive dress shop--all a little too quickly and easily. Carrie's brother 'Ring and another stranger arrive, provoking the final crisis, the revealing of Josh's secrets, and the happy resolution. (My question is: if Josh had gotten the superhuman/horse-face/farmwife he originally wrote for--what did he intend to do with her once he returned to his "real life"?)
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