RITA Award FinalistKatie Schmidt runs The Bowen Bride, a wedding dress shop in charming Bowen, Nebraska. Rumors abound that a woman who wears a Bowen Bride creation stays married forever, drawing hopeful brides to the heart of farm country in search of a dream dress.Katie plays into the rumor because it’s good for business, keeping the real magic behind her custom gowns a secret. However, when … custom gowns a secret. However, when sexy single father Jared Porter enters the shop, looking for a wedding gown for his engaged—but far too young to be married—daughter, Katie wonders if a little rumor control might be in order.
Or will she and Jared give the residents of Bowen something to talk about?
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The Bowen Bride (Bowen, Nebraska Book 1) by Nicole Burnham I enjoyed this first book in what looks like the start of a series.. Katie Schmidt runs the Bowen Bride and there is magic in the hem of each dress with thread her grandmother gave her. Jared Porter works for his brother as a cabinet builder and is the single father of Mandy(17 yr old who wants to marry her boyfriend. They both have insecurities they have to work through. There are lots of laughs a few tears and all leading to a lot of HEA’s.
Small town romance fan? Oh are you in for a treat! This first installment of the Bowen, Nebraska series delivers all the heart, all the family, all the warmth, all the MAGIC that readers expect and then some.
What begins as a “partnership” of convenience, gradually turns into genuine friendship with obvious sparks hinting at the possibility for more. The question is…are either of them ready to explore what could be? Readers will enjoy the gentle flirting and smile inducing fun along the way as they dance ever closer to answering that question, while the flash forward at story’s end allows for a potential HEA…hey, I’m not spoiling the surprise!
The Bowen Bride starts out with a fairly typical story of a teenager who wants out of her small town… Katie is very close to her dad and grandmother but she is still SO ready to be out of Bowen. She’s applied to out of state colleges, without telling her family, but she is still very respectful of her Oma and listens to the “old” stories. This book is based on this one story, about Oma’s magic thread and how it has been passed down thru the generations. That’s about all I can say without giving any spoilers; and I really can’t do the story as much justice as the author did.
Fast-forward a few years and Katie is back in Bowen, running a bridal (dressmaking) shop just like Oma did for oh-so-many years. A man walks into her shop one day that she sorta knew of growing up but as he was a few years older, they had never spoken. His name is Jared Porter and he finds himself standing outside Katie Schmidt’s shop, on a mission for his teenage daughter.
The book is about Katie and Jared and a growing relationship between the two. For two people with very different coming of age stories, at the heart of it, they are both alike in that they have deep, crushing feelings about themselves that each has to work thru in order to move forward. Their interactions are combustible, at least that’s what my imagination created. I loved them both but Jared should be the poster boy for being a terrific father and human being. Katie’s no slouch, that’s for sure, but my heart belonged to Jared.
Really liked the book, even if I wanted to pull Mandy, Jared’s daughter, aside quite a few times and let her know my thoughts on how lucky she was to have a dad like Jared.