I enjoyed this collection of Christian romance stories very much. It is refreshing to find stories that are clean and have a focus on God.

After tackling quite a few classics, I was ready for a light read, so a set of novellas sounded good to me. Though the last novella collection I read was a disappointment, this collection is a set of books previously published by Heartsong Presents, which I enjoyed a lot when I was just beginning to read Christian fiction. And since these were all set in my home state, I thought it would be a nice change.

Out of the three stories, the last was probably my favorite. All the same, I didn’t find any of them particularly memorable.

As I read South Carolina Brides, I think I discovered the main problem I have with romance novellas is that they try to fit all the elements of a full-length romance into a short amount of pages; it just very rarely works.

I know: it sounds really mean and harsh, but no matter how good of a writer an author may be, I’m always left disappointed when reading these novellas. I liked them a lot when I was younger, so maybe as time has gone on I’ve (hopefully) raised my bar of expectation in my reading material. As a fraction of a whole, South Carolina Brides wasn’t any better or worse than any other novella collection I’ve read. (and I personally apologize to the author of this collection for using South Carolina Brides as my starting point for this rant) I can’t say I’m completely done with novella collections, as I admit Barbour’s The British Brides Collection caught my eye (this one being a much larger collection of stories by a variety of authors) so I’m still hopeful. But unfortunately, South Carolina Brides didn’t break out of the sappy/dime-novel-feel mold this genre seems shackled to.

I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for my honest review.