Customer Reviews

Morning Comes Softly (Avon Romance)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

If a grieving surly rancher who's just lost his brother and sister-in-law in an accidental vehicular homicide and now has their three children to rear needs anything else on his plate, it is a mail-order wife. Travis Thompson has to face facts - he cannot do it all himself and he has managed to alienate all the women in town who could and would help him. Advertising for a bride is his last chance to salvage his life before he loses the children to the foster care system. The children's constant comparison of Travis's home life to their parents' does not help. Shy, mousy-haired, short, librarian Mary Warner at once senses the opportunity to get a life. If she stays in Louisiana, she will wither away until she is like a dusty volume on the bottom shelf of the back rack, a book that no one ever checks out. Travis's wish for a long-legged, well-endowed blonde are left unmet, as Mary reminds him of nothing so much as Minnie Mouse when she gets off the plane and two days later they are married. Look for a few weeks of tough adjustment which is much harder on Travis than on Mary, whose skills in the kitchen and with the sewing machine are second to her ability to take charge of a household. There are a lot of elements here: the grieving children, a grieving Travis who has no time for grief, and Mary adjusting from a damp Louisiana to a dry Montana. And then there's Travis's reputation in the town as a hell-raiser. Who would have thought he'd advertise for a wife, much less settle on someone like Mary? The subplots are the man responsible for the auto accident that killed Lee and Janice and orphaned their children and the man's son, who has fallen for a woman who feels their worlds are too far apart. With her usual skill as a writer, Macomber manages to pull these somewhat disparate elements together in a tough but tender love story. I check my local book store and library for new Macomber books on a regular basis. She never disappoints.

Now here is a book that could easily be made into a Hallmark channel movie! It was a very nice story with a very happy and satisfying ending. It was easy to get into, though not overly filled with excitement. There is a little "spice" here and there, but very tastefully done. This is an easygoing and relaxing novel to read with everything working out almost too good to be true... all kinds of warm fuzzies. You will giggle, maybe sniffle ever-so-slightly and get lots of warm fuzzies. It's a great nighttime read or a book for a lazy relaxing weekend.

You can't help but be reminded of `Sarah, Plain and Tall' when reading Debbie Macomber's novel; the main premise is very similar. A woman answers a newspaper advertisement placed by a rancher in need of a wife. In `Morning Comes Softly', however, the setting is present day Montana. Or, to be more accurate, Montana circa 1993, the year of this novel's first issue.

Mary Warner is a 32-year-old librarian, small of stature, big of heart. Alone now after the death of her mother, her feelings of loneliness are exacerbated when she reads Travis Thompson's newspaper advertisement. Travis has had some heartache of his own. His brother and sister-in-law have been killed in a suspicious car crash. Their three children are now in Travis's care, but he's having problems coping with his new responsibilities.

The opening chapters are particularly striking as Mary's loneliness is described in poignant detail. She yearns to be a wife and mother, but her perceived lack of beauty and slight build have badly dented her self-confidence. Meanwhile, the surly Travis spurns the local townswomen's offers of help, preferring to manage the children in his own way. With the threat of having the children taken into care hanging over him, Travis realizes that desperate action must be taken.

The anticipation that the author builds up ahead of the lead characters' eventual meeting makes for captivating reading - as does the rest of this novel. The story is certainly derivative, but that should not deter anyone who enjoys good romantic fiction from reading this book. There's plenty to enjoy here. There are some nice touches of humor and some very touching scenes too. A sub-plot involving Travis's desperate search to find the person responsible for his brother's death gives the novel some added depth.

I admit that I don't usually read romances, but sometimes I'm in the mood to curl up with a cozy romance novel such as Macomber writes. I've read several by her, and I think this was the weakest.

Of course, you have to surrender all skepticism about a situation in a novel like this, but within the context of the situation, it needs to make some sense. In this novel, it didn't. The premise is that two people, desperate to be married (for different reasons), have a mail-order marriage (resulting from an ad placed looking for a wife). I could believe that in the long run, this might work out, as arranged marriages often do. In this book, however, the bonding took place far too quickly to be credible. THere was too little in the way of plot or character development. Although the setting was a Montana ranch, which could have offered many opportunities for richness, they might as well have been on a farm in Kansas. Although the woman was from Louisiana, I came away thinking that the author had little understanding of that culture, because once in Montana, all the character had left was a Southern accent.

By the time I was 50 pages from the end, I was tired of reading the book and just skimmed the ending. The supposed mystery was no mystery to me -- it was pretty obvious who the criminal was.

I would not recommend this book to anyone but a die-hard Macomber fan. She's written books that are much, much better, and would-be readers she read those instead.

This is one of my favorite Debbie Macomber books. My copy is on loan to a friend right now, but when I get it back, I plan to read it again. She is one of my favorite authors because she keeps the story moving along and writes about every day life and relationships.

The copyright date on this story is 1993 even though it was re-published in 2007. It is one of her earlier books before she hit her stride as an author. The book is enjoyable but predictable and doesn't have some of the strength of her later books (for example the Blossom Street series).

The storyline is around Mary Warner, a librarian from Lousiana, who answers an ad for a wife. Travis Thompson has placed the ad since his brother and sister-in-law have been killed in an accident and left him with their three children to raise. He is in over his head trying to run his ranch in Montana and take care of three chilren, ages 5 - 12. This book forces you to suspend any critical thinking about how unlikley the whole thing is if you want to enjoy the book. There are lots of the predictable misunderstandings between the two as their relationship develops (very quickly, I might add) and passionate reconciliations.

There is also very little sense of place in this story since it could have taken place in any rural setting in the United States. In her later books, the descriptions of the locale play a large part in her stories and always add much to them. The state of Montana could have provided interest in the story, but the opportunity was not capitalized upon. The story is strictly romance and happy endings.

Not bad -- read it in about 2 days -- but not up to the quality of her later books. Very light and fluffy.

Louisiana librarian Mary Warner expects to never have a man in her life let alone a husband in her life because her reticence is crippling. So when she reads a personal ad from a Montana rancher Travis Thompson seeking a wife and mother, she shocks herself by responding.

Travis needs someone to nurture the three young orphans that he has become guardian to ever since a tragedy took away their parents. If it means marriage to reunite them under his roof so be it as having them in foster care is killing him. However, a Southern belle in the cold remote Big Sky country seems an anomaly to him. He expects her to last less than a Montana summer heat wave, but when Mary meets the three grieving kids, she knows she has finally found her home. She falls in love with the rancher whose personal ad began her odyssey and Travis quickly reciprocates.

This is reprint of a warm early 1990s contemporary ranch romance. The fun in the tale is to take the nineteenth century mail order bride theme and bring it into the late twentieth century. The lead couple is a delightful pairing as he is gruff and she is shy; yet the three kids steal the hearts of the audience. Debbie Macomber's fine tale feels a bit dated with the boom of all sorts of gadgetry to place personal ads over the Internet but still remains a strong tale due to a solid cast not understanding that "love will find a way".

Harriet Klausner

This was a last minute purchase for a airline trip which took way to long. I was depressed when I found myself finishing this book before my flight was over. I was captivated by the characters in this book and laughed so hard the people on the flight were wondering what I was doing in my seat. I would recommend this book for anyone who would love to smile and laugh along with feeling like they were there with Mary & Family. I can't wait to read it again.

A quick read, enjoyable. But lacking in the depth department... relationship flourished too easily, Mary was one-dimensional, Mary's Louisiana roots disappeared entirely when she got to the ranch. Nothing about the book wow'd me but it was enjoyable overall, and a short read.

I got this book off of Swaptree because I liked the idea of the storyline. I received a note with it from the previous reader stating how much she enjoyed it, and still I put off reading it for awhile. I finally picked it up and started reading it and got sucked in. This is my first Debbie Macomber book and she truly knows how to write. Her use of words is different than I'm used to reading and made the book so much more enjoyable. I wasn't sure how the storyline was going to play out, but I enjoyed finding out. Being an outsider in this brand new relationship between Mary and Travis was really nice. I felt like I was a friend and found myself cheering for them to make it work.

My only complaint is that I would have liked to have learned how Mary managed to tie up all the loose ends at home so quickly, but it's true that that really has nothing to do with the story at hand.

The background story on Tilly and Logan was very enjoyable as well, though I was a little naive and it took me awhile to put the pieces together of why they were even in the story.