Tuesday, April 1, 2014

IRON HORSE KING (American Royalty)

IRON HORSE KING (American Royalty) by Rebecca Bernadette Mance




It was a journey of epic proportions.  It was an impossible...
monumental task. A story that is almost too amazing to believe.


But it is true... at least the facts on the epic part anyway....

The romance is filled with hair like chocolate cherry cake, girls with big dreams...
involving dress shops in Paris, being a suffragette.. and avoiding just the
kind of overblown, oversized, overpowering man like Ramsey. One who believes he
can conquer the west by plowing an iron horse through the Sierra Nevada.


Then the story gets a little steamy and completely off track... historically speaking!

A practical and smart girl like Mary Rose would never fall for the man that sends
all the girls along the railroad line swooning like ninnies. Even if he does
rumble into town, literally, in his iron horse carrying his oversized frame,
booming laugh and an ego bigger than the mountains.


However, Mary Rose confronts the man... a man by the way... that represents everything
she hates about men...so she can find out where her brother has gotten off to.


Harold left to help build tracks and never returned.

Unfortunately, Mary Rose is dismissed by the lout Jacob Ramsey, not just out of hand, but with
demeaning laughter and an arrogant discharge. Even her French didn't work!


What is a practical suffragette to do to get out to the end of the railroad line....?

What girls always do to dive into a man's world.... become a man... a very small man, of
course, with baggy clothing and a big hat.But how to drive spikes?


Take the journey of epic proportions... ride the rails of history with Mary Rose and
find out what happens when a sassy young lady decides to take on The Iron Horse
King.
Iron Horse King (American Royalty, #2)Iron Horse King by Rebecca Bernadette Mance
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'm on the fence about this book. I rather liked the "True Story" faction of the book. The story is based loosely on the real railroad baron Charles Crocker. She based her character Jacob Ramsey on him (loosely). It was interesting to read about his feat, building a cross country track. The romance was sort of iffy. I liked Mary Rose. She was strong willed, hard headed, but didn't seem to fit the era. I would have felt her more of a 20's type woman with her thought process.

Jacob the brash, angry older man was cool at first, but the more I read, the more I disliked him. I felt that their relationship was nothing. I didn't feel a connection between them, more like a school girl crush. The last part of the book, we could have done without. You go from being a railroad tycoon to writing about war in France and it just didn't seem to me that it fit. Sure, you're showing Mary followed her dream, he came, blah blah. It just didn't fit well. There were many aspects of this book I enjoyed.

The way Mary got onto the train to find her brother was interesting, suspenseful and kept me reading. What happened after she was caught, again, kept me reading. It's just the small things that irked me and almost ruined the story for me. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone. As always, I love people to form their own opinions, but this isn't one I would send out to my readers as a recommendation.

View all my reviews

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