Book Review and Giveaway: The Bridegrooms by Allison Pittman

The Bridegrooms by Allison Pittman is a family tale set in late 1890’s Ohio.  The story revolves around elder sister Vada Allenhouse, who takes on the mothering role for her three younger sisters when their mother leaves the family for another man.  Their father, “Doc” Allenhouse, struggles with much pain with his wife’s vanishing and does his best to rear his daughters to be upstanding women.

The novel covers nine days in the lives of Vada and her sisters, mostly chronicling some abrupt turns that happen in their love lives.  Vada faces temptations and decisions regarding her long term relationship with Garrison Walker, a local musician and lawyer.  Hazel yearns to be married and is developing a long-distance relationship with a glorified pen pal.  Althea, who hasn’t spoken since the day her mother left 17 years ago, pines away for a man who remains speechless for most of the story.  Lisette, the flirtatious youngest daughter who has always had more than one boy on her trail, finally seems to be taking a firm interest in one young man. In the lives of these women, changes and decisions are made that could change things forever.

I found The Bridegrooms to be a pleasant Christian novel with four interesting love stories intertwined within the Allenhouse family.  Their lives are not cookie cutter perfect and they struggle with many of the same things that we struggle with today.  Loneliness, temptation, loss, insecurity and deception were themes that came up often.  The girls frequently turned to their relationships with God for strength and guidance.  The story ambles its way along until a pleasant conclusion.

I can’t find much to criticize in Pittman’s book.  The characters were real and recognizable, the romantic story lines were enticing yet chaste, and the fate of these characters kept me guessing.  At the same time, I find this book to be fairly unremarkable, forgettable and almost vanilla-like.  I’m not sure how I would change it, but Bridegrooms left me feeling blasé and a little bored.  It’s a pleasant enough story, but I doubt I’ll remember much of it a year from now.

Some of you may disagree with my assessment of this novel, so I’d like to offer up my copy for one of my readers to try.  It’s a quick read, and maybe your experience with it will prove to be different than mine.  If you’d like to win my copy, here’s what to do:

**CONTEST RULES**

• Leave a comment below; this counts as your entry.
• Entries accepted until 11:59pm on Saturday, May1st
• Open to U.S. addresses only.
• Make sure at least one posted comment includes your email address. If you'd rather not have your email posted here, you may contact me directly to give me that information after you've entered here.
• I will compile the entries and the winner will be chosen by Random.org, so even one entry can make you a winner!
• Should you win, I will contact you on Sunday the 2nd for your mailing information.  Please take measures to ensure that my email will make it past your spam filters, lest you miss my message! (CalicoCritic@gmail.com) You'll have 72 hours to respond before I pick another winner.
• More information on the giveaway policies can be found on the Contact / Policies page.

Bonus Entries

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That's it!  Thanks for stopping by, and good luck to all the entrants!

This title was provided to me by  WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group's Blogging for Books program. No obligation other than an honest review was required.