This series by Caroline Fyffe is so not my typical thing, but my Kindle happened to show me an ad for the first three books in this series a couple years ago when my mom had just died and I was looking for some comfort reads. Timing really is everything.
Since it’s not my usual genre, I decided to look up the series on Goodreads before hitting that “buy” button and saw that it had a ton of reviews and an average rating of 4-point-something stars, so I went ahead and bought the trilogy. I think I only paid about $7 for the three books, so it was kind of hard to argue with the pricing. There is a fourth book in the series, but I only bought the first three and I won’t be buying the fourth, so this review will only cover the first three: Heart of Eden, True Heart’s Desire, and Heart of Mine.
The book is about five sisters, Mavis, Belle, Emma, Lavinia, and Katie (I think that’s the right order, but I can’t remember if Emma is older or younger than Lavinia). The five sisters were born in a frontier town in Colorado called Eden, but shortly after Katie was born, their mom, terrified by some Indian raids that hit too close to home, packs up all five of the girls and takes them to Philadelphia, leaving their father behind. Their mom dies shortly after that, leaving the girls in the care of someone they call Uncle Vernon (although I don’t believe he’s actually related to them), and I can’t remember his wife’s name, but they make the girls work to earn their living, all the while telling them their father was a useless drunk who was no good for their mother.
The girls are in their early twenties and late teens when they get called to Eden for the reading of their father’s will. Given what they’ve been told, they’re not expecting to inherit much, except maybe a few mementos, but boy are they in for a surprise because their father owned about half the town. He owned a huge ranch he called the Five Sisters Ranch, plus a hotel/restaurant, clothing store, lumber shop, a tannery, and I can’t remember what the other one was. He had regularly sent letters and money to the girls when they were alive, but Vernon and his wife hid or destroyed the letters and kept the money for themselves. When the sisters are called to Eden, Vernon and his wife leave the country to escape the wrath of their charges.
Anyway, the sisters jointly inherit half the ranch and each one inherits one of the five businesses. Despite not having had any contact with his daughters since they were very young, their father manages to identify the perfect shop for each sister because of course he does. The other half of the ranch goes to Rhett, his right-hand man and BFF. The will gives Rhett first dibs to buy the other half of the ranch if the sisters decide they want to sell, but it asks that the girls spend six months in Eden before making their decision. I can’t remember the details of the will, but it was something like they would get a fixed amount if they left Eden right away, but if they stayed six months, they had the opportunity to sell for more. Something like that.
Anyway, the sisters all have lives back home. Mavis has a job, Belle has a fiancé, either Emma or Lavinia is studying to be a teacher (I get those two mixed up a lot).
Anyway, of course the sisters end up staying in Eden with plans to return to Philadelphia after the six months are up, and of course they end up deciding to stay in Eden, and of course Belle ends up falling madly in love with Rhett and breaking off her engagement with her fiancé (who turns out to be terrible, of course), and the rest is pretty predictable.
The books supposedly take place in the 1880s, but Fyffe clearly knows nothing about the time period. She doesn’t know how women’s clothing worked (especially bonnets), and she doesn’t know the wedding traditions of the time, nor does she understand how photography worked. Oh, and she doesn’t know anything about horses (you never let a horse into the wild without taking off its shoes first).
The writing itself isn’t very good either. It’s all very contrived and improbable, and yet predictable. For example, in the third book, Emma ends up falling for the bastard son of an English duke who ends up being legitimate after all … and the heir to the dukedom! Because of course he does. You just knew that was going to turn out to be the case regardless of how many hoops of ridiculousness Fyffe had to jump through to make it happen.
The third book also annoyed me because Emma tells her sisters she’ll never fall in love and that she’s happy being a single woman running a business, and while swearing off love at such a young age is pretty silly, her sisters’ disbelief that Emma could possibly be happy without getting married and having kids made me roll my eyes at a Jessica Jones level.
That and Fyffe tries to include people of color, but does a terrible job. There’s a black man we only see once just after he’s had the crap beaten out of him and then we hardly ever see him again, despite the fact that he’s supposedly Rhett’s best friend. There’s a group of Chinese Americans who stop to explain to one of the sisters how they use animal organs in their healing process (nope, Chinese medicine is vegan and herb based. If you’re going to include other cultures, at least bother to do a little research first). Also the Chinese Americans end up kidnapping Katie, so it’s not a great look to have half your characters of color turn out to be criminals.
There’s also a Latino settlement in Eden and one of their men starts seeing Katie, and her sisters aren’t happy about it, and they say they only disapprove because of the age difference, but Rhett and Belle aren’t exactly the same age either and no one bats and eye at that. Also Santiago ends up leaving Katie for a Latina, which ended up feeling very much like, “Yeah, you’re cute, but you should really stick to your own kind”. I’ve already said I’m not going to buy the fourth book, but I’d be willing to bet Katie ends up with a white guy.
That said, I did read all three books, so clearly I got some enjoyment out of it, even if half my enjoyment came from laughing at how bad the writing was.