Country Brides

On a thread on the AAR forum someone started a conversation about dated books. People spoke about out dated fashions, attitudes, cars etc etc. Some books are so well written that the dated materials do not matter, others make it hard to get past the shoulder pads.

One book that I remember as dated is Debbie Macomber's Country Brides. This re-release has two related stories and was originally published in 1990. In her intro, the author mentions that the story was written before the age of cell phones.

In the first story Rorie meets Clay after her car breaks down on a country road. It is a foreign car and will take days to get the part. No hotels have any vacancies so she is stuck at Clay's home. The first scene where she is stuck all alone not knowing what to do got me twitching. No cell phone to call AAA. No way to call her boyfriend. Can't call 911. Well you get the idea. I was literally going a little cookoo on that. But I read through it and the book, the characters were great. Other than the cell phone, I did not find the book too dated. I give this one an A-

That leads us to the second book. I had such high hopes for it. I liked the characters, I liked the setting. And there was no dated anything! Except for the attitudes. Yes even in 1990 a woman was expected to marry and in this theme the hero kept pressuring and pressuring the confused woman. I just wanted him to stop badgering her and her to grow a back bone and tell him she needed some space. It was not awful, and I am sure 18 years ago I would not have been so up in arms about the wimpy bride, but alas it bugged me. I did finish it on the first read and I did finish it on the second but overall I give this book a C just for that.

If you can find a stand alone copy of A Little Bit Country, Rorie and Clay's story pick it up.And let me know if the lack of a cell phone made you all twitchy too. If you see the combination go ahead too, but be prepared to want to throw the book across the room if you read another "I know you love me so we should get married'.