Cal­vary Wife by Donna Dal­ton is an ebook that is cur­rently a best­seller at Fic­tion­wise. I fell in love with the cover and was hop­ing this would be a good story. What I got was a for­mu­laic romance that bored me to tears.  Here is the book’s description:

A night of too much whiskey, a wrongly-numbered hotel door, and an angry guardian force ded­i­cated cav­alry cap­tain Chase Brooks into mar­riage, despite his vow never to endure another love­less mar­riage. He reluc­tantly agrees to take his new wife with him to his remote out­post, con­vinced the pam­pered girl won’t last two weeks in the harsh con­di­tions of the south­west and will beg to be sent back east. The one thing he didn’t count on was a burn­ing desire for his unwanted wife. Cal­lie Grant embraces the oppor­tu­nity to start a new life far from the con­trol­ling hands of her guardians. Endur­ing the rough envi­ron­ment of the Indian Ter­ri­to­ries, she trans­forms from a timid flower into the poised, self-reliant woman she’s always dreamed of becom­ing. As her grat­i­tude towards the cap­tain turns to love, she resolves to break through her husband’s for­mi­da­ble reserve and uncover the pas­sion­ate, lov­ing nature he tries to hide.

This is a mar­riage of con­ve­nience story that opens dur­ing Ulysses Grant’s inau­gural cer­e­mony in Wash­ing­ton. Cal­lista Louis Grant or “Callie” is the third cousin removed to the new president-elect. Orphaned at a young age, Cal­lie had dreams of mar­ry­ing a mil­i­tary man. The president’s wife, Julia Dent Grant seems to exem­plify what a good mil­i­tary wife should be: con­fi­dent and per­fectly poised.

How­ever, her legal guardians have other plans like mar­ry­ing her off to a Sen­a­tor who is x amount years her senior. Hor­ri­fied, Cal­lie tries to change their minds but is met with resis­tance and defeat. Her uncle and aunt are happy to be rid of her and she reluc­tantly accepts her fate. That is until a drunken offi­cer mis­takes her room for his own and com­pro­mises them both.

After dis­cov­er­ing Chase and Cal­lie together, Callie’s guardians assume the worst and demand mar­riage as rec­om­pense. How­ever, Chase isn’t all keen on mar­riage since his first one wasn’t all that great but accept it he does. After the fes­tiv­i­ties in Wash­ing­ton, Chase was on his way back to his gar­ri­son and his troops. After recent events, he now has a new cal­vary wife to take with him on his journey. It wasn’t long before I spot­ted trouble: 

Ice flowed in his veins at the thought of the hell his first wife had put him through. Lies and betrayal. Pain and death. He wouldn’t go through that again. Ever.

I was a lit­tle hope­ful after this sentence:

Gri­er­son read his thoughts. “Not all women are like Miranda [the first wife]. Per­haps if you give this girl a chance…?”

Alas, my heart sank for good after read­ing this paragraph:

His anger rose to dan­ger­ous lev­els. He hadn’t met a woman yet who didn’t have at least one trait in com­mon with Miranda. And now this one, Miss Grant, who could set things to right with only a few words, was using a lie and her fam­ily name to enare him. No, from Eve right on down to Cal­lie Grant, women couldn’t be trusted.

Could the mar­riage have been pre­vented even if it was an acci­dent? I don’t know. Callie did remain silent and inten­tion­ally allowed every­one to mis­un­der­stand the situation. I agree with Chase in that she could have cleared things up with a few words. How­ever, Cal­lie saw this as her big oppor­tu­nity to start a new life with a good look­ing man who wasn’t old enough to be her father.  I really couldn’t blame her.

The quoted pas­sages you read pretty much sums up my dis­like of this story. First, the hero paint­ing all women with the same brush.  I had to check the copy­right date to see if this was pub­lished in the 21st cen­tury because haven’t we been down this road before? Sec­ondly, pac­ing was non-existent. I had read four comic books and two full length nov­els when I started The Cal­vary Wife. Third, the romance was dis­ap­point­ing and the chem­istry was weak. Chase is adamant that his mar­riage will be in name only despite sub­ject­ing read­ers to his lust filled thoughts. He com­plains about her tempt­ing him, lur­ing him with her wily charms. Yet, he’s jeal­ous of any man look­ing her way and finds him­self unwill­ingly drawn to her. I’d had enough him and Cal­lie who blushes beat red and whose heart skips a beat every time her hus­band gazes upon her coun­te­nance. God save me from silly virgins. 

I made the deci­sion to quit The Cal­vary Wife because it was dif­fi­cult to con­tinue to read each word, each sen­tence, each para­graph. So, with that I will say that is is a DNF. The story held promise but it just didn’t deliver for this reader. What I liked about this book was the cover and the his­tor­i­cal bits that were weaved into the story. The author uses real his­tor­i­cal char­ac­ters and I do like that in a his­tor­i­cal novel. How­ever, it wasn’t enough to keep me turn­ing the pages. DNF. Read at your own risk.

Edited to add: I should have read the book descrip­tion but I didn’t. So, clearly it is my fault that this book didn’t work well for me because the book’s descrip­tion clearly states what the story was about from the get-go. My mistake.

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