Nellie is a decent variation on the mail order bride trope that sends a widow with two kids from the East all the way to San Francisco... as the wife of a saloon owner.
Nellie, the namesake of the novel, was married and bore two kids for her husband despite her husband being somewhat of a sadist in bed. But after the husband died in the Civil War, her in-laws don't really want her around. She married herself off to the West Coast to Blake Malone, a saloon owner in San Francisco. Nellie had a hard time loving the guy because she thought sex equals pain and she didn't want to confuse the kids. Blake, despite being a saloon owner (who also employed a lot of "working girls") loved the kids, but his previous marriage didn't work out (not spoiling it here) and have a current woman after him (who's a bit psycho)...
The book was just slow as heck at times. Blake is just a little too perfect in the present despite his past actions, and Nellie, despite her marriage and kids, is about as shy as an ingenue. The tension started to creep up when the psycho ex of Blake started to plan her dastardly deeds, but that was drawn out for a LONG while with other characters introduced possibly for subsequent volumes. There were TWO separate darkest hours, one from her ex-in-laws, and one from the psycho-ex, and thus there were two endings.
All in all, the setup and the time period does make a different type of mail-order bride story, but the diffused threat from two fronts as well as some excess of plot points made the book less enjoyable than it could be.
Category: Historical western / mail order bride
Primary Plot: Widow with two kids married herself to San Francisco to a saloon owner with "working girls"... Can he show her that sex is actually wonderful and she can be loved?
Tropes: mail order bride, different worlds, scars, evil in-laws, single parent, widow, bar owner
Overall Rating: 3/5
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