" Touched by Time" by Zoe Matthews & Jade Jensen

This book was a little unusual for a mail-order bride novel. The main character, Kathleen, works as an ER trauma nurse in the year 2005. While she loves working as a nurse, she hates where she works. Her supervisor treats her very poorly, and it has been becoming increasingly clear to Kathleen that the woman dislikes her and wants her to quit.

Kathleen shares an apartment with her best friend Nicky, who is the closest thing Kathleen has to family. Her parents were killed in a car accident when she was young, and with no other living relatives, Kathleen was left to be raised in the foster care system. Nicky's family was the third one that she was placed with, and they raised her until she graduated from high school.

One day Kathleen noticed an ad in a Denver newspaper looking for mail-order brides. Thinking it had to be some sort of a joke, she wrote to the address listed and asked for more information. Before long Kathleen finds herself exchanging letters (by way of the woman running the business) with a man named Patrick. As they get to know each other through their letters, Kathleen decides that she would like to meet him. There is just one rather large obstacle.... he lives on a ranch some distance outside of Denver in the year 1892. She lives in Denver in the year 2005.

This book was a quick but very enjoyable read. It was interesting to see whether or not a woman from 2005 can learn to live happily in 1892. There have been so many changes in the years between the two time periods, can two people from those very different time periods truly fall in love and live happily in the past without any of the modern conveniences that one of them is accustomed to using on a daily basis?

And then there is the problem that Kathleen has seemingly vanished with almost no explanation. Her roommate in 2005 suspects that the woman behind the mail-order bride business has done something terrible to Kathleen. After all, what other possible explanation could there be for Kathleen to leave with virtually no explanation, leaving everything, including her cellphone, behind?

I enjoyed this book. It was a little different from the other mail-order bride books that I have read, though it did possess all the expected aspects of that type of story. It even left a hook at the end leading into the next book in the series. Given that I enjoyed this one, I will likely look for the next one and read that one as well.