The California Gold Rush Romance Collection of nine stories. These stories include:
The Price of Love by Amanda Barratt The Best Mn in Brookside by Angela Bell Civilizing Clementine by Dianne Christner The Marriage Broker and the Mortician by Anne Greene The Lye Water Bride by Linda Farmer Harris A Sketch of Gold by Cyntiha Hickey Love Is a Puzzle by Pam Hillman The Golden Cross by Jennifer Rogers Spinola Gold Haven Heiress by Jamie Jo Wright These stories are fabulous. My favorites are Amanda Barratt's The Price of Love and Jamie Jo Wright's Gold Haven Heiress. What wonderful Collection.
Highly recommended.
5 plus stars.

This is a truly beautiful collection of stories that leave you with a good feeling as you complete each story. They stretch from China to Ireland obviously including California on the way. The stories were so different from each other that they are easily remembered including a Chinese uncle and niece that have reached well below the poverty line with no friends in China as they don't worship the household gods of the neighbourhood to a girl who has moved into an abandoned village only to find it overtaken by a rich prospector cum businessman and a female newspaper reporter sent to report on the gold rush.
Overall a very enjoyable and diverse collection of stories which I thoroughly recommend.

An entertaining set of new novellas centered on all of the people brought together in search of California gold in the 1850's!

From all the corners of the world and various walks of life, many people came out of desperation, and others for an adventure. Some went home again with their newfound wealth, hoping to change their family's status, like in the story by Angela Bell. Still more decided to stay and continue working among the down-and-out miners, and those who had sunk low, like in Anne Greene's, Dianne Christner's and Jamie Jo Wright's tales. Others came to work, report what they saw and help settle the newest state in the Union, like in Amanda Barrett's, Linda Farmer Harris', and Pam Hillman's stories. Many were driven by dire circumstances to leave their homes behind, as in Cynthia Hickey's, and Jennifer Spinola's tales, facing danger and prejudice in hopes of a better life.
I enjoyed every one of these novellas--they were all good! Particularly liked Civilizing Clementine by Dianne Christner, that had fun characters attempting a young woman's makeover, in the vein of My Fair Lady. Also really enjoyed Love is a Puzzle by Pam Hillman, and The Golden Cross by Jamie Jo Wright.

Adventure, history, and romance wrapped together with threads of faith make this an enjoyable collection. Recommend!
4.5 stars

Nine women are swept up into the gold rush, some following their fathers, some sent for, and some choose the gold fields.

Lorena Quinn goes to the gold fields in search of a story, but finds so much more, and discovers a side of herself that she never knew before in The Price of Love.

The Best Man in Brookside finds Sophia fighting to save the local fair, making new friends along the way, never complaining.

I really admired Ming, and her determination in The Golden Cross. Ming follows her uncle from China to the goldfields, and they find hope as they learn to live their faith in America.

I liked the men of faith too, like Rafe Riley in The Marriage Broker and the Mortician,being a mortician is not the dream job for Rafe, but it gives him an opportunity to offer comfort and share the gospel with the miners. He's happy to help Eve when she is stranded in Eureka, and they form an unlikely friendship.

I liked Jackson in A Sketch of Gold. He captures images of the goldfields for the the papers back east. He get's a job following Roy McIlroy and his "son" but it doesn't him long to figure out that the job is slightly different from the one he thought he was signing on for.

I liked the way that Jack treated Thalia in Gold Haven Heiress. He has recently made big changes in his life, and wants to bring that new life into the ghost town of Gold Haven. But the town is not as uninhabited as he thought...

The Lye Water Bride has Jo Bass on the heels of a mystery when she finds discrepancies in her papers at the bank, and around the a strange comes to town asking a lot of questions.

One of my favorites is Love is a Puzzle, Shanyn's father goes missing, she works together with Nick, another member of the surveying team to find her father, and put together the pieces of the clues that her father left for her to find him.

Civilizing Clementine was a humorous and entertaining read. Clementine's father hires the Featherstone sisters to turn his daughter into a lady, but Clementine is determined to thwart them at every turn, but they are very resourceful and recruit the help of Samuel a reporter, and friend of her father to help her practice.

Overall, a wonderful read that shows the many various aspects of the gold fields, and the people who risked it all for the chance at a better life.

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This book drew me in with the very first story when it says, "Gold fever is on everyone's lips, drummed into everyone's brain, and dreamed about on everyone's pillow." This sums up the book. This book nine authors and each author is gifted and you know who gifted them by reading the book when you read GOD is intertwined with each story. Each novella stands alone and well it should have because each tugs at the heartstring and each is better than the last if indeed that is truly possible. It communicates to the readers Historical Romance and how correct each one is. You are surprised by some of it. You read each one and you fall in love with each character and the one thing that I hated about the novellas is that they were over.

Read this collection all the way through and loved how the last story was post gold rush so even in the collection we can see the history of the gold rush as well as the beauty of the romances. Some very unique stories and lovely romances. My only complaint was that the last story seemed more like a marriage of convenience even athough the end, not a really a romance? Very worthwhile collection to read!

It is no secret that I love these Bride Collections from Barbour. I pick which ones I want to read based on the theme and, usually, a single author that I already know and enjoy. In this case, it was solely an author that had me requesting an ebook through NetGalley. Having previously enjoyed Angela Bell's contribution to the Lassoed By Marriage Romance Collection, I was excited to see what she would do for the Gold Rush theme and how she would take it to England and add her signature twist with well-researched steam based technology. Her story, The Best Man in Brookside, was definitely a favorite as Irishman Donovan returns to England with his fortune in gold, determined to care for his sister and exact revenge on Sophia, the Englishwoman who blackened his name in the village of Brookside. I especially enjoyed how his accent bled into the third person narrative whenever it was focused on his point of view.

As with this story, my two other favorites also took us away from the actual mining. Jamie Joe Wright gives us a wounded soiled dove and a rich man on a mission to transform the ghost town she inhabits. Dianne Christner treats the reader to a rough and tumble Clementine whose father hires the Last Resort Traveling Etiquette School to refine her after a potential suitor’s rejection.

The other stories continue to entertain with a variety of settings and characters. Amanda Barratt's story tells of two newspaper editors unwittingly in competition for the same promotion. Anne Greene sets her story of a marriage broker determined not to wed and a mortician in Eureka, California. Linda Farmer Harris features a banker and a fugitive, Cynthia Hickey a newspaperman/artist/preacher and a woman forced to masquerade as a boy, and Jennifer Rogers Spinola adds a bit of diversity with her story of Chinese immigrants. In the one story that actually had me saying “Awww,” Pam Hillman takes us into the wilds of California Territory with a surveyor and a cartographer.

Overall, another solid collection from Barbour that is entertaining and a satisfying romance read with nine Happily Ever Afters. Definitely would make my top 10, if not top 5 of the Bride Collections I’ve read so far.

This review refers to a review ebook copy I read for free, courtesy of the publisher, through NetGalley. All opinions expressed are my own.

Loved all the stories in this book!! What an amazing collection! AMD each was different enough to capture my attention withoiy feeling like I was reading the same story over and over again

If you love American history, you gotta love the California Gold Rush! The 1800s had many tales worth telling, but as a reader, I often find them so similar it is hard to distinguish the difference. If you're looking for an array of women's romance stories from that era, you can't go wrong with this collection of nine, all steeped in the Christian faith.

The first story is from Amanda Barratt, called The Price of Love. A young woman who is a writer accepts a bet from her employer that she can't go to California, write stories about what's happening with the gold rush, and not fall in love. There are so many men and so few women, that her boss is sure she will find a man to marry. When she balks at the challenge, he offers her a promotion if she wins. But she doesn't count on a handsome writer meeting her at the dock upon her arrival.

Next is a story from Angela Bell titled The Best Man in Brookside. This story has two main characters, a man and a woman. Although the story starts out with Donovan Gallagher panning for gold, he doesn't stay there long. He soon has his pockets full, so he heads home to reclaim his little sister and also to confront Sophia Heyer, the woman who fired him for stealing from her estate. Now that he is a rich man, life will be different.

Dianne Christner is the next author with her story, Civilizing Clementine. Clementine Cahill is an interesting character! She is a real "backwoodsy" type of gal who is uneducated and often dirty, uncouth, and pretty rough. Her father decides to fix that and hires two women to turn Clementine into a fine lady. There are lots of comedic moments, but it's not a story that stuck with me too long.

The Marriage Broker and the Mortician is by author Anne Greene. The "marriage broker" is Eve Molloy, who has taken it upon herself to find husbands for the 18-yr-old girls who are no longer welcome at the orphanage home due to their age. She loads them up and hauls them off to Eureka, California to find husbands for them. That's when Eve meets the mortician, (two interesting professions for the 1850s) and although he finds her charming and adorable, she is not so sure about him. This story had several turns that just seemed to be dropped in for no apparent reason, but still, it was entertaining.

Linda Farmer Harris wrote The Lye Water Bride, which featured Jo Bass, a banker in Dry Diggins, California. Thad is Jo's brother, although most people in town think they are husband and wife, not brother and sister. They are co-partners in the banking business and they give value to the gold nuggets that the prospector's want cashed in. But when Jo hires a man to help her at the bank, things start happening that makes her and other folks suspect he might not be on the up-and-up.

A Sketch of Gold by Cynthia Hickey is a wonderful story about nineteen-year-old, Rose, whose father talks her into dressing and acting like a boy while they pan for gold, so that untrustworthy men will leave her alone. Soon, they meet an artist who came west to sketch. Before long they find out he is also a minister. He suspects Rose is a girl, not a boy as she appears, but how in the world do you ask someone that? This story ranks near the top of my favorite stories in this collection.

Next in line is Pam Hillman's story, Love is a Puzzle. This is not just a romance, it is also a light mystery with an interesting subject! Shanyn Duvall leaves her home and heads west in search of her missing father. He is a surveyor mapping the Sierra Nevada mountain region and she hasn't seen or heard from him for over two years. Last she heard, her father was looking for a new place for them to call home. When Shanyn hears that her father is dead, but can't get more details, she starts investigating. I would have liked to have heard more about her father, because not only was he a mapmaker, but he made puzzles and was also an artist. This was an interesting story and was one of my favorites.

The Golden Cross by Jennifer Rogers Spinola is not the usual Gold Rush story. Although beautifully written, this story is heavily laden with religious overtones, almost to the point of overshadowing the story itself. Ming and her uncle are from the Canton Province of China. Just like all the other Forty-Niners, they wanted a better life and they thought San Francisco was on a mountain of gold and that all the pebbles were gold nuggets. But after arriving in San Francisco, they find the real world is very different from the one they imagined. Soon, they open a Chinese and/or Cantonese restaurant, which simply comes to life through this writer's hands. This is a story worth reading.

Last, is Gold Haven Heiress by Jamie Jo Wright—Although she's no ghost, Thalia Simmons has taken up residence in a ghost town! Thalia is a "soiled dove," scarred and shamed. But she has escaped that life, only to find a new man knocking on her ghost town door. The abandoned town of Gold Haven has more to offer than Thalia ever imagined. Wonderful story!

Everyone, from all walks of life, is caught up in gold fever during the California gold rush. The anthology richly captures a slice of life during this tumultuous and exciting time in American history.
Nine authors come together to give a unique perspective on the robust era of the gold rush.
Amanda Barratt pens the story of Lorena Quinn, in The Price of Love. Lorena is a struggling new reporter who jumps at the chance to cover the gold rush and to prove her boss wrong. Women don’t need men to take care of them, even if the woman is unbecoming with unfashionably red hair.
The Best Man in Brookside by Angela Bell focuses on Donovan, an Irish immigrant to England. However, Donovan had to flee England after being falsely accused of theft. He feels himself a failure for having to leave his little sister and wants to vindicate himself. So, he seeks his fortune in gold in America, hoping to free himself and his sister.
Civilizing Clementine by Dianne Christner, introduces us to Clementine Cahill, forced to return to San Francisco with her Chilean friends after her father is injured in a logging accident. Motherless Clementine begins to feel betrayed when her invalid father badgers her to clean up her grammar and start wearing dresses.
Ann Green’s story, The Marriage Broker and the Mortician, opens with the robbery of Eve Malloy, while she was at a boarding house. Rafe Riley, happening upon the scene 15 minutes later, offers to assist her and takes her to dinner when none of the multitudes of men at the boarding house seem to care.
Jo Bass is made known to us in The Lye Water Bride by Linda Farmer Harris. Jo and her brother Thaddeus run the local bank. However, Thaddeus falls ill, leaving Jo with the chore of caring for day-to-day operations.
Cynthia Hickey writes the story of Rose McIroy in A Sketch of Gold. Poor Rose is forced to cut her hair to hide her muliebrity. She can’t believe her father's latest get rich quick scheme involves trying to pass her off as a male and call her boy all the time.
Pam Hillman’s tale, Love is a Puzzle, presents the story of Shanyn Duvall and her aunt who traveled from the tip of South America to Sacramento in the hopes of seeing Shanyn’s father. They learn he has passed away, and during this time, Sacramento is not a friendly town for two single women.
The Golden Cross by Jennifer Rogers Spinola centers on Ming and her uncle, who travel from China to California. Ming feels God called her to be a missionary to America, and her uncle is hoping they can find riches in the gold-rich state.
Golden Haven Heiress, by Jamie Jo Wright, is about Jack Taylor and Thalia Simmons, residents of a ghost town. Thalia, trying to escape her past, moved to Golden Haven to be left alone, then Jack shows up and disrupts her peaceful life.
The stories in the Gold Rush Collection differs in their seriousness of Biblical applications. However, each author does a fitting job of presenting Christian principles.
I thoroughly delighted in each story and each author’s interpretation of the gold rush time frame. I also enjoyed the ability to read as many or as few stories as I wanted in one sitting.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.